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FEATURING

NAME YOUR PLEASURE

4 Novel of Hedonism

by JAMES E. GUNN

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STORIES BY

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VOL. XLIV, NO. 3 A THRILLING PUBLICATION WINTER ISSUE
A COMPLETE NOVEL

NAME YOUR PLEASURE "...James E. Gunn 10

"Let joy be unconfined," they cried, and made happiness their first
and most important duty — ecstasy a basic requirement of their law

A SCIENCE FANTASY

CRESCENDO Margaret St. Clair 72

How could Floyd love his neighbor — when she kept sending him dead
cats? He hated Nina's verse and her dead cats till one Hallowe'en

SHORT STORIES

THE PORTABLE STAR Isaac Asimov 54

Holden made love to his friend's wife. Because he couldn't help it

THE FEMALE Robert Crane 65

"/ am only a woman and my heart is full of pity for the strangers "

COUNTERFEITER Winston Marks 81

They duplicated lettuce which was of the garden, not banknote, type!

MY FUZZY COUSIN, REAMER Charles A. Stearns 90

Blood is thicker than anything — even if you have Martian relatives!

BACKLASH Guy DeAngelis 100

They'd laugh him out of the service if he dared to reveal the truth

FEATURES

THE READER SPEAKS ' The Editor 6

A PAGE FROM ISAAC ASIMOV'S NOTEBOOK Special Feature 63

THE OLDEST BOOK ON MEDICINE Bess Ritter 89

Also See Cartoons on Pages 31, 64 and 69
Cover Paint : ng by EMSH — Illustrating “Name Your Pleasure”

THRILLING WONDER STORIES. Published quarterly by STANDARD MAGAZINES, INC., 10 East 40th Street,
New York 16, N. Y. N. L. Pines, President. Copyright, 1954, by Standard Magazines, Inc Single copies,
25c; Subscription (12 issues), $3.50; Add 40c for Canadion. 75c for foreign and Pan-American subscriptions.
Re-entered as second-class matter August 28, 1953, at the Post Office at New York, N. Y., under Act of
March 3, 1879. Names of oil characters used in stories ond semi-fiction articles are fictitious. If the
name of any living person or existing institution is used, it is a coincidence. Manuscripts must be accom-
panied by self-addressed, stamped envelopes and are submitted at the author's risl^. In corresponding with
this publication please include your postal zone number, if any. Winter, 1955 issue.' PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.

You Good Pay -Bright Future -Security

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ETS:

T HIS month we’re foregoing our usual
opening remarks directing your attention
to the special feature on Isaac Asimov’s fu-
ture history, which you’ll find on Page 63. It
corresponds to a similar feature we’re running
in the current issue of Startling Stories on
Poul Anderson’s future history, and we’ll be
interested to hear how you like it.

THE LOVELY GILDED RUT

by Tom Pace

/

Dear Editor : The only tiling I can say for the
Fall cover is that that will learn the chap to turn
off the ignition when he ground-loops. Or is this
an invasion by salamander?

The stories ; well, I would have bet that no one
in stf could have done a better job than Murray
Leinster in rewriting Grimm's Fairy Tales . . .
unless Andre Gide is better qualified for the job.
Lately, I have restricted my fantasy reading to
Lord Dunsany. Gavagan's Bar, and the advertising
trade papers . . . that's, enough for any man. But
as long as you can get Leinster to write them,
I will read your fantasies.

I rather liked Invasion. One of these off-cute
deals with an expected stinger in the tail (I once
knew a girl with a stinger in the tail but she used
only two parts brandy to one creme de menthe.
Where was I?) ... not bad. The thing that gets
me that green and burnt-orange hairdo. After
the Italian natural look. I can take anything.

I liked Mack Reynold’s A Dream . . . Dying. It
ties in right nicely with what we’ve heard about
“brainwashing” lately.

Trade-In is a grisly little item, but with today’s
emphasis on youth and strength and health, who
knows? It seems that no one wants to be a silver-
haired matron, or a greyed old boy sitting on a
veranda with a pipe and a cup and a volume of
Horace. Well, would you?

Rita Whitney had the only really readable let-
ter in this issue, certainly including mine, and I
wish to offer her my congratulations. I think her
•statement “Only the masculine women ever achieve
anything except a good man and a flexible figure”
is a considerable generalization, but it was a hell
of a plain-spoken, intelligent letter for all that.

Concerning the “lovely gilded rut” (I have a
comment, but it’s double entendre) Mrs. Whitney
referred to j have many fans beside myself con-
sidered how beautifully the advertising industry
has pandered to this alleged feminine gold-plated
taste for the status quo!' And talk of brain- wash-
ing . . . there is no better example of the fact that
continual insistence that an untruth is true will
make it accepted as absolute truth. Half the girls
in this country, »to be Conservative, are convinced
that all their problems will end as soon as they
achieve' a 36-inch bust. The way to do this, of
course, would be to avoid hampering the natural
development of said bust. But that don’t sell fab-
ric. so advertising blandly implies .that a sort of
forced-growth process, implemented by using their
dainty Brassbound Special, will cause them to grow
to such proportions that admirers of theatrical tal-
ent will beat a path to their door. After a few
adolescent years of this treatment, their muscles
give up the struggle and begin to imitate wet lin-
en cord ; whereupon they turn in the Brassbound
model and buy either a Cantilever Miracle Work-
er or a Mati Hari Foam Rubber delight, depend-
ing on whether they put their faith in engineering
or in deception.

Or: Detroit can and occasionally does build
damned good engines, excellent power trains, trans-
missions, etc. But since the sales and advertising
departments hold full sw'ay there, too, they have
somehow' convinced the American public that weight
means safety and road-holding ability, justifying
the addition of a quarter- or half-ton of useless
sheet steel to the automobile ; ignoring the ele-
mentary physics which holds that for a given
curved path and a given speed, the greater weight
will have the greatest centrifugal force tending
to throw said weight off that curve: ignoring the
fact that in a collision said sheet metal, no matter
what its weight, is going to crumble like tissue on
Christmas morning and allow' sad things to hap-
pen to the customers. But if they live through it,
they'll be back to buy another Marshmallow Eight.

Anyway, you get the point. Do American women
actually control all the buying choice (I’m not
arguing about buying power 1 ) in this country, and
are American women really stupid enough to be-
lieve all the total reversions of truth served up to
them by the manufacturers’ ballyhoo boys? I don’t
think so. I think it’s more that the blue-eyed lads

(Continued on ftage 8)

6

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of Madison Avenue have sold themselves and their
bosses a bill of goods, and we’re suffering from it;
that most of the success of modern advertising is
ilKspite of, not because of, the material, and be-
cause there just isn't much choice. If no one sells
anything but Marshmallow Rights, and you haven’t
the dough for a Rolls or a Ferrari, you drive a
Marshmallow Eight,

Enough of this. I have a formation to make. If
that sounds like a risque statement, be advised that
a formation is a military gathering for the pur-
pose of selecting the honored few who will cut
grass around the Orderly Room today. I must
go defend my country with a swingblade . . .
thought the days of chivalry were over, and here
I am armed with a sword again . . . slightly
modified. Model Ml. — 4709 A Gateway Terr., Ar-
butus, Md.

How about the cover this time? It's taken
directly from Janies Gunn's lead story. By the
way, your letter last time drew' lots of com-
ment. Here’s some :

PUZZLED

by Carol M. Pifer

Dear Editor : I am not trying to ridicule any-
one. but I was a little puzzled by the letter from
Mr. Tom Pace. Mr. Pace seems to consider him-
self as an agnostic, but then continues on a col-
lision course of refutation. I was left with the
distinct impression he is more of an atheist. Even
though an agnostic does not accept the idea of a
Divine God smiling . benevolently from above,
neither does he state “Religion is .false because
there is no God.” He merely stands by with neatly
folded hands repeating his stand. “Prove to me
there is a God, and I will believe ; prove there is
no God and I will not believe. Till then, I am not
going to assert myself as theist or atheist.”

After years of reading letters. I have at last
gotten mad enough to answer. — 4924 South Are..
Youngstown, Ohio.

Miss Pifer disagrees — and so does the writer
of the following letter:

YOU CAN’T DISMISS RELICION

by Thomas O'Dell

Dear Sirs; Bravo to Mr. Tom Pace! Religion
as a social force has failed ! Yes, and while we’re
at it, let’s eradicate Christ from the history books.
After all, He made such a tremendous impact on
history that it just wouldn’t do to let it get
around. Tom, your idea of religion having failed
isn’t new. The people in France- around 1789
thought so, too. They even went so far as to over-
throw every vestige of religion, and they liberated
their reasons and intellects from that awful tyrant
the Church. Of course, we’ll overlook the fact
that the people took an ugly, naked hag of a woman
and placed her on the main altar of the cathedral
and offered mock sacrifice to her, and that later
a terrible Reign of Terror seized the City of
Freed Intellects.

I’ve always thought that religion, from its earli-
est beginnings, was man’s attempt to alleviate an
innate desire to recognize a Being greater than
himself, and by offering sacrifice, to keep in that
’Being s’ good graces. I also thought that it was
an attempt to explain things that Science couldn’t
account for and that it was more sophisticatedly
called Philosopny, or Science to the fans. Why or
how, I ask, could a fan's objections to or for re-
ligion be expressed in terms of special interest to
him r

Tom, your idea of religion having failed as a
social force is ridiculous. Your picture of man
using his mind and reason alone to perfect himself
is nuts ! Individually many people are lazy. Many
men even today devote themselves so completely
to asinine pleasures that their -minds are for the
most part dormant. And how many men will blind-
ly follow reason and not be influenced by their
emotions? Man needs a guide, something or some-
one to give him the real answers to the questions :
What is man? What is God? Why are we here?
I suggest you start digging your cave.

And your views of conflict. I suppose the con-
flict of good and evil has no meaning for you.
Sure, some people escape into religion just as
they escape into science-fiction ; and who are you
to deprive them of it? I do believe that irreligion
is an extremely harmful social force, because it's
unnatural, it suppresses the innate desire to recog-
nize a greater Being, someone who does not care
about our petty affairs.

So you can’t dismiss God or Religion because
it’s convenient to do so, or write it off as having
failed. Long after you're gone, and not missed,
religion will continue to play the important role
it has ; of protecting man’s innate rights when
despots abuse them, and offering consolation when
all else has failed, including your sterile Utopias.
- — 8230 Wisconsin, Detroit 4, Mich.

However there’s at least one sympathetic
voice in all this hue and cry. Here’s a man
who has something to say about . . .

THE NEXT LOGICAL STEP

by Val Walker

Dear Editor: The Fall TWS has average
stories, average illos, average advertisements etc.
The only story possibly breaking above average
was Murray Leinster’s The Amateur Alchemist.
That one might rate an A.

Trade-In was the best of the short stories,
and about the only other story that might be above
average.

Now for the letter column, the only portion
of the mag solidly above average, every issue.

The outstanding letter was, of course, from
Tom Pace. I enjoyed the point Tom made con-
cerning our society making decisions as a group.
I agree with Tom. in that it isn’t a particularly
outstanding way to live. Unfortunately however
it is, I believe an effect of a complex social struc-
ture or civilization. Even many primitive people
make their decisions in a group. Naturally then
it is not their high degree of civilization that
(Continued on page 111)

8

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"Let joy be unconfined," they cried, and made happiness
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I

The Hedonist

T HE day began as more than eight thousand days
had begun before.

“Wake up,” the pillow murmured sweetly in the
Hedonist’s ear. “The sun is shining. It’s a beautiful
day. Wake up. Be happy!”

The Hedonist rolled over and punched the pillow into
silence. He pried one eye open and peered out the long,
low window that formed one wall of his cottage. The
smog billowed against it grayly like a fat, long-haired
cat rolling at the Earth’s feet, needle claws sheathed

Illustrated by EMSH

10

11

12 THRILLING WONDER STORIES

for the moment but ready to flash out
and slash if the impulse struck.

So much for realism.

The Hedonist suppressed the thought
automatically and sat up. Another day,
another pleasure.

He glanced at the pillow beside his
and the brown hair flung across it like
a silk scarf. He sighed. It was time for
that to end, too.

He flipped back the covers and
brought his hand down smartly against
the youthfully rounded bottom. It
smacked satisfactorily. Beth turned over
and sat up in one startled movement.

“What’s the matter?” she spluttered.

His pajama tops were several sizes
too big for her. They drifted down
around her like a scarlet tent. She
yawned and lifted her arms to rub her
eyes. When she dropped them to her
sides, the jacket bared one creamy shoul-
der and threatened to slide even farther.

A smile drifted across the Hedonist’s
lips. Sleep was so precious when you
were young. There was never enough
of it. There was never enough of any-
thing. As you grew older you were more
easily satisfied. He sighed again. That
was a pity, too.

Sleepily, Beth caught the slipping
jacket before it left her shoulders com-
pletely. “What’s happened?” she said
in the middle of a yawn.

“Time to get up,” the Hedonist said
gently. And, even gentler, “Time to go
home.”

“Home?” she said. She was sud-
denly awake.

“I’m certifying you today. You can
get married whenever you and your
fiance can agree upon a date.”

“But — ” she began and stopped.

With the skill of long experience, the
Hedonist studied her face without re-
vealing his interest. Beth’s face, nor-
mally calm, was troubled. Even trou-
bled, it was the most beautiful face in
his ward. He had taken her under in-
struction with a joy that was not en-
tirely professional. But so young, so
young.

His memory, unbidden, oflfered him
the date: February 23, 2035. A Thurs-
day. He remembered it well. Three
months ago she had been nineteen years
old. He had presided at her birth; now
he had prepared her for marriage.
Through the nineteen years between he
had guarded her happiness. It didn’t
sit well beside his fifty-three years.

“You stilj want to get married, don’t
you?” he asked.

“Oh, yes,” she said, her dark eyes
steady on his face.

“Then you have my blessing. I have
done my best.”

“I know,” she said evenly.

“The man you’re betrothed to — he’s
from another ward?”

“You know that,” she said.

Yes, he knew. He knew everything
that went on in the ward : the problems,
the worries, the troubles, the sorrows.
He knew everybody: their emotional
quotients and what to expect from them
and when, and how to treat them. Some-
times he even knew their thoughts.

In this ward, he was — in a very real
sense divine. In his knowledge and his
power over the lives and happiness of
a thousand people, he was a god. But
a god can know too much. Knowledge is
a burden, and responsibility multiplied
a thousand times is enough to bow the
shoulders of an Atlas.

But the girl beside him was deep; he
could sense that much, even if he
couldn’t touch bottom.

Touch bottom! The smile that flick-
ered across his face was almost wry.
He had touched that one for the last
time.

“You must be gentle with him,” the
Hedonist said. “He may not have had
your advantages.”

She touched her soft lower lip with
her teeth. “I will,” she said softly. “If
— I mean — when we get married, we’ll
come back here. If he needs treatment,
I’ll send him to you — ”

The Hedonist shook his head. “That
isn’t wise. Girls are more adaptable
than men. You could adjust to another

NAME YOUR PLEASURE

hedonist, but you* husband would have
trouble. You must move to his ward.”
She was silent, looking at him through
a silken veil that had drifted down
across her forehead.

“Remember,” he said with an un-
easiness he could not pin down, “your
duty — your only duty— is happiness.”
“Yes, Hedonist,” she said obediently.
“Good-by, Beth,” he said. “Be happy!”

1 TE SWUNG his legs over the edge of
the bed and walked the three steps
to the necessary with cautious dignity.

FROM THE DICTIONARY

OF HEDONISM

•

hedonics (he-don'iks), n. ; see -ics. Psy-
chomedieal science dealing with the na-
ture and pursuit of happiness. .

hedonism (he-don'izm ), n.; 1 Ethics. The
doctrine that pleasure is the sole or
chief good in life and that moral duty is
fulfilled in the gratification of pleasure-
seeking instincts. . .

hedonist ( -ist ) . n. 1 One who lives in ac-
cordance with hedonism; i.e., for pleas-
ure. 2. (Since 2005) A practitioner of
hedonics.

It wasn’t because he was fat, exactly,
but fifty-three years had thickened him
a little around the middle, and there is
nothing aesthetic about a middle-aged
man’s naked back.

Besides, the Hedonist could sense that
Beth was watching him.

The necessary door slid shut, and he
was alone in the three-by-four foot
cubicle. Fifteen minutes later he was
ready for the new day and its demands
upon him. His beard had been depilated;
warm, detergent sprays had cleansed
him; hot sprays had rinsed him; icy
needles had jabbed his body into tin-
gling awareness. Hot air blasts had dried
him. And he was reluctant to leave the

IS

comfortable little room.

Womb-symbol? the Hedonist won-
dered.

He pressed the bottom button on the
right. The lights shifted. One wall was
suddenly a full-length mirror. The
Hedonist looked at himself and frowned.
He was not so thick after all. There was
no fat on him ; he was tall and well-
muscled. His close-cropped hair was still
b'ack, unfrosted. His firm, definite face
was unlined. He looked no older than an
athletic thirty.

The last geriatric treatment had been
even more successful than usual.

And yet there was something wrong.
He had counted six distinct feelings of
unpleasure since waking And there was
no reason for any of them.

Quickly, skillfully, he counted his
tdessings. In a golden age, he held one
of the most responsible and rewarding
positions possib'e. He knew “his work;
he did it well; he hked it. There wasn’t
the smallest reason for him to be un-
happy. And yet he sighed.

As he accepted new underclothes from
the dispenser and stuffed the trans-
parent wrapper into the disposal, he
told himself that the difference be-
tween Beth’s age and his was obvious
and irremediab °. What did he want? A
wife?

Nonsense! There was logic behind
the Inconstancy clause of the Hedonic
Oath. “As a hedonist, I shall not love
nor wed nor father, but I shall keep
myself intact for the proper perform-
ance of my duties. . . .”

A hedonist could not permit himself
to become emotionally involved with one
person. To the extent of that involve-
ment, his available empathetic energy
was diminished, and his carefully culti-
vated insight was impaired. _The ward
would suffer. His dependents "would feel
slighted. They would stop bringing their
problems to him; and even if they still
came, the delicate relationship so vital
to his work would be destroyed.

Publilius Syrus said it over two thou-
sand years before : “A god could hardly

THRILLING WONDER STORIES

II

14

love and be wise.”

And yet — The Hedonist sighed.
After ten years of the Institute’s rigor-
ous, specialized training and twenty-
three years of practice, he still didn’t
understand the roots of his own un-
pleasures.

How could he hope to treat the un-
pleasures of his dependents?

“Happiness is indivisible,” he told
himself sternly and concentrated on the
devaluation of the desire.

By the time he had finished the he-
donic exercise, his feeling for Beth was
no different in kind or intensity than
for any other girl in his ward. He felt
once more — as he had felt so rapturous-
ly long ago — the exquisite beauty of
hedonics.

When he came out of the necessary,
Beth was gone. He felt a quick, cold
sense of loss.

The bed had been lowered into the
floor. It would have fresh sheets on it,
he knew; Beth was a thoughtful girl.
His desk and chair had swung out from
one wall; from the wall opposite had
come the comfortable diagnostic chair.
The room had returned to its spacious
daytime dimensions of twelve by twelve.

Devaluation and substitution soon
took care of his absurd disappointment,
and he realized, as he sublimated the
emotion into professional enthusiasm,
that he had forgotten to cut the cord
cleanly and finally. It was always a deli-
cate operation ; he dreaded it. But it
was vital to the therapy, and he had
never actually forgotten it before.

The relationship between a hedonist
and his patient is an unparalleled in-
timacy; transference is inevitable. And
if the hedonist has his problem, the pa-
tient’s problems are even more serious.
And he does not have the hedonist’s
technical equipment and training for
handling them.

It was the hedonist’s duty to break
off the relationship cleanly when the
therapy was finished.

He made a mental note to call Beth
back.

Oh, What a Beautiful Morning!

ABIT is a technique for simplifying
existence, for saving time and the
energy* of decision. It is a pleasure tool.

As a creature of habit, the Hedonist
had a standing order for breakfast. He
pressed the top button on the wall be-
side the table. A panel slid up into the
wall. His breakfast was in the cubicle
behind it. It sat on a tray in covered
plastic dishes. He drew the tray out
upon the table and broke the plastic tab
that held the lid on the juice glass. He
drank the juice quickly; it was cold and
good and acid, as usual.

It had been a good batch ; Monsanto
was proud of it, and they had a right to
be.

The next dish steamed aromatically.
The plankton cakes had a delicate
shrimpy flavor the Hedonist always en-
joyed. They were especially good fried
in the new high-fat chlorella oil. He ate
them slowly, savoring each bite.

While he ate, he flicked on the news.
He punched the highly compressed chan-
nel ; the words came rattling from the
wall like the rare, accidental hail on his
plastic roof. The film was compressed
only a little, but the time-compression
on the speech sometimes went as high
as seventy percent without audible dis-
tortion. He understood it as easily as or-
dinary speech, and there was little
. enough time, anyway, for everything
that had to be done.

The.Hedonic Index, which had regis-
tered only 85% at daivn (the depressing
effect of the morning smog, the Hedon-
ist thoughts, had already risen to an
acceptable 93% (breakfast,), and was ex-
pected to go higher as the 0737 shower
cleared the air.

In the corner of the picture, the time
was listed as 0736. The Hedonist stopped
eating and lifted his head to listen. Over
the announcer’s voice came a slow, grow-
ing spatter of rain on the roof. The
Hedonist nodded with satisfaction.

NAME YOUR PLEASURE 15

Right on time. Through the window, he
could see the smog melting away. That
was the kind of efficiency that made gov-
ernment a solid, unobtrusive founda-
tion for a nation’s happiness.

The Hedonist remembered when some
thought it hedonics’ proudest achieve-
ment: “They made the rains run on
time.” Now it was a commonplace.

There would be sunshine all day, al-
though the weather bureau had sched-
uled a brief shower for 1916, just at
sunset, to clear the air once more. The
temperature would be held steady at 85
degrees until dusk, when it would be
allowed to drop to 70.

Interplanetary Authority announced
the completion of a new ship in the
yards adjoining the Old City port. (It
gleamed like a jewel, the Hedonist
thought, with the sunlight breaking
through the clouds to sparkle in the
diamond-drops of water the rain had
left.) The ship would be launched short-
ly when the emigration complement was
filled. At the end of the three months
trip was Venus.

The Hedonist smiled. Shortly. The
ship would wait a long time there in
the yards. How do you recruit emi-
grants from the promised land? Where
do you find people who will trade peace
and plenty and happiness for toil, star-
vation, and misery? Asylums, maybe, if
there were any asylums left. But' there
weren’t. There were few people left who
were that crazy.

“The ship,” the announcer said, “has
oeen named the Asylum.”'

r PHE Hedonist started and relaxed,
* smiling. Someone had a sense of hu-
mor. Strangely enough, it was a rarity
these days. Well, if that could be at-
tributed to hedonics, it was a small price
to pay for the tears that had vanished,
too.

The culturing of a new mutation had
increased chlorella production by 50%.
The protein content of the new crop was
high. Chlorelloaf would be on the menu
in most wards for several days. Plank-

ton would be more plentiful soon. The
scooper fleet reported a layer of zoo-
plankton which promised to be almost in-
exhaustible. Catch was already within
the thousands of tons.

The Hedonist uncapped the Kafi and
hoped the boats didn’t syphon the sea
clear of life. Alga was all right and the
synthetics were efficient and often quite
delicious, but the subtle flavor of once-
living protein could not be cultured or
brewed. On the other hand, he reflected,
he could be thankful that he lik^d fish ;
some people didn’t, and they had only
the synthetics and the algae or an ex-
tensive re-education therapy.

The latest Tele flush Index, in millions
of gallons, place the sensie LIFE CAN
BE ECSTASY 11.7 ahead of ONE
MAN’S HAPPINESS. . . .

The Hedonist stopped listening, in-
stantly, completely, and lifted the Kafi
cup to his lips. He had no time for the
sensies and less inclination. Perhaps
they had a certain therapeutic value in
some cases, but he considered them on
the dangerous lower peak of imaginary
gratification. They were daydreams
made effortless.

He had suggested as much in a memo-
randum to the Council, but no doubt
they were too busy for such minor mat-
ters.

The Hedonist shuddered and almost
dropped the cup. For a month now, the
Kafi had been bitter and acrid. Some-
thing had gone wrong in the last syn-
thesis. He supposed the stock had been
too great to dump, but he hoped that
Dupont would do better next time.

He braced himself and drank it down
without taking a breath. It was the only
stimulant he allowed himself, and he had
a vague premonition he would need it
before the day was over.

“The Hedonic Index,” the announcer
said with infectious joy, “has reached
95%.”

The Hedonist switched him off and
shoved the soiled dishes into the cubicle
and drew down the cover. The lunch
menu flashed on, but he turned it off. He

16 THRILLING WONDER STORIES

couldn’t stand thinking about lunch so
soon after eating. He would select some-
thing a little later when he wasn’t so
full, he told himself, but he knew he
would be too busy. He would forget and
be forced to accept the standard meal.
Well, that was good enough, and he
would be happy with it.

The wall square started blinking at
him. A cheerful voice said, “Message
for you. Message for you. Message — ”
The Hedonist hit the “Accept” but-
ton hastily. The square steadied and
filled itself with letters, black on white :
TO: Hedonist, Ward 483
FROM : HEDONIC COUNCIL, Area 1
You will report to Room 2943, Hedonic
Council building, Area 1, at 1634 for
annual examination. Be prompt! Be
happy !

\OU will report, the Hedonist repeat-
ed to himself as he brushed the mes-
sage away with the automatic acknowl-
edgement. The form was standard, and
the message was clear enough. But his
last examination had been less than six
months ago. They wouldn’t be recalling
him so soon — would they?

There was something ominous about
it. A sudden shiver ran down his spine
His adrenals began discharging their
secretions into his bloodstream; in re-
sponse, his heart beat quickened, the
blood sugar level rose, the coagula-
bility . . .

The sensations weren’t completely un-
pleasant. They stimulated him to a con-
dition of awareness and excitation he
hadn’t experienced in years. But they
were also dangerous.

Happiness is basic. Without that, all
else is ashes.

The Hedonist suppressed it. He
breathed deeply, sitting quietly relaxed.
He damped his heartbeat, soothed his
adrenals. The Council wanted to discuss
his memorandum on the sensies, he told
himself calmly.

He suppressed the small voice that
asked, “How could they forget that your
last examination was so recent?”

When the adrenaline was satisfac-
torily dissipated, he slipped on a short-
sleeved shirt and a comfortable pair of
tan shorts and glanced down at the
day’s schedule. According to the micro-
film memorandum projected on the desk,
he had nothing listed after 1630. He
picked up the stylus and scribbled across
the desk: 1634-2943 HCB-a.e.

He read it once, hesitated, and went
back to underline the last two letters.
He had no reason to be afraid of the
examination; he had passed them all
easily. There was no reason to let anx-
iety ruin his day. And with that under-
lineation the worry vanished. He placed
an order for a cab at 1615 and turned
to the day’s business.

Sara Walling. The Hedonist punched
her number on the square of buttons
under the edge of the desk. Her case
history appeared in .front of him, pro-
jected onto the desk in numbers, let-
ters, and symbols, a meaningful, con-
densed description of twenty-seven
years of a woman’s life. The Hedonist
nodded and wiped it away. His memory
had been correct, but it was just as well
not to depend on something fallible
when a person’s happiness was at stake.

It was 0800. The milky square on the
outside of his door read: COME IN
AND BE HAPPY. The door opened.
Sara Walling stood there, her dark, thin
face unhappy.

The Hedonist was up to greet her in
one fluid motion that took him effort-
lessly the three steps to the door. He
put his arm around her and caressed
her fondly. “Joy, Sara! Come in, dar-
ling,” he said gently. “Tell me all about
it.”

When she w’as sitting in the diagnos-
tic chair, the Hedonist sat down at the
desk and, cocking his head sympathet-
ically, divided his attention between
Sara and the desk-top readings.

At twenty-seven, she was a lean, sal-
low girl, an inch under average height
at five feet nine. Her features weren’t
bad, but it was obvious that she was
one of the least attractive girls in the

NAME YOUR PLEASURE 17

ward. She was unmarried, and she had
no lover. That was her problem. Or
so she thought. The Hedonist knew,
with a flash of guilt, that he had failed
her.

From the readings flashed from the
chair to his desk, the Hedonist put to-
gether another story, just as valid. Mus-
cular contractions, pulse, blood pres-
sure, breathing, volume of limb, but
chiefly the electrical resistance of the
body — often called the psychogalvanic
reflex — gave him a running account of
her emotional state. Balanced against
her recorded emotional quotient, it was
obvious what had happened.

The marriage aspect was only the
culmination of several physiological and
psychological tendencies which were
themselves aggravated by the marriage
aspect. It was a vicious, cyclic tangle.
He would have believed it impossible ex-
cept that the constantly increasing de-
mands on his time made periodic re-
view of every dependent an ideal he
was unable to realize. But now there
was no time to be lost in the long but
not hopeless task of untangling this
girl’s life.

“You have someone in mind, of
course,” he said.

“Yes,” she admitted.

“Has he gone with you to the pre-
marital cottage?”

“Once,” she snapped.

“I see,” the Hedonist said. It was a
misfortune all the way around. He sup-
pressed his sympathy; the diagnosis
was complete. “Have you any ideas for
increasing your happiness?”

She hesitated. “Can’t you make him
love me?” she said quickly, hopefully.
“Then I’d be happy and he’d be
happy — ”

“Is he unhappy now?” the Hedonist
interrupted quietly.

“No-o-o,” she sighed.

“Then I can’t make him do anything,”
he pointed out. “You know that. The
fact that your desires don’t coincide
with his is no grounds for compulsion.
You’re the one who’s unhappy. You’re

the one who needs therapy.”

“But that’s the only thing that will
make me happy !” she wailed.

The Hedonist shook his head slowly,
pityingly. “We can’t force life into the
patterns we draw for it, and if we let
our happiness depend on circumstances
we doom ourselves to sorrow and de-
spair. Happiness begins at home — in-
side. Didn’t we teach you that?”

“I was taught,” she groaned, her
teeth clenched, “but it’s so hard to
learn, so hard to do.”

“Have you tried the hedonic tech-
niques?” the Hedonist asked. “Have
you practiced suppression? Devalua-
tion? Substitution?”

“I’ve tried,” she moaned. “I’ve tried
so hard. But it’s no use. It’s too — ”
She broke suddenly. The Hedonist was
ready for it. He caught her against his
shoulder and let her cry until the sobs
had dwindled into sniffles.

“How long has it been,” he asked
gently, “since you’ve had a diagnosis?”
“I don’t remember,” she said in a
muffled voice.

“A year,” he said firmly. “You can
afford a nickel every week. We’re go-
ing to bring up your blood pressure, in-
crease your thyroid, tone up your body
generally — ”

“Will that help?” she asked weakly.

“ ‘Life is swell when you feel well,’ ”
the Hedonist quoted. “Even the ancients
knew that. Humanity is a tangled thing.
You haven’t felt well. You’ve been de-
pressed, moody. That has reacted on
your relationships with other people.
That, in turn, has increased your de-
pression and created psychosomatic
conditions. The spiral continues down-
ward. Now we’re going to start it back
up.”

Her thanks were almost incoherent.
“I’m certifying you for minor plastic
surgery,” the Hedonist added. He stud-
ied her drab, gray skirt and blouse.
“And we’re going to get you out of
those clothes and into something bright
and revealing. Don’t worry now. You’re
in my hands. You’re going to be happy.”

18 THRILLING WONDER STORIES

As he watched her leave, there was
a shadow of wistfulness in his eyes. She
was happy already. He wished his own
problems could be solved as easily. He
thought of Beth — then irritably forced
his attention back to the therapy sched-
ule.

The next patient was a man. He had
a knife in his hand. “You filthy kinsey!”
he screamed and launched himself aci’oss
the floor.

Ill

A Day at School

F OR a fraction of a second, the Hed-
onist sat in his chair, frozen, watch-
ing the revelatory contortions of the
man’s face as he came close. For all
his seeming speed, he approached with
incredible slowness. The Hedonist had
time for a dozen observations, a hun-
dred thoughts.

He identified the man: Gomer Berns,
62, recently married, a newcomer to
the ward. He identified the flashing
knife — an antique table instrument,
honed down. He speculated about the
expression and its probable motiva-
tion —

And he was out of his chair, moving
with blurred speed, his hand catching
the wrist of the hand that held the knife.
As he caught it, he twisted. Something
snapped, brittly. The knife clattered to
the floor. Berns sprawled across the
desk, unconscious.

The Hedonist bent to inspect Berns.
He heard a faint whirring noise, but
as he stooped to listen, it stopped. He
frowned and continued his examination.
The wrist was broken; geriatrics was
not so successful with the bones. Out-
side of that, Berns was in good con-
dition. He had fainted from the pain.

The Hedonist straightened up. His
pulse was swift and dynamic. The world
seemed sharp and vivid around him. He
felt immensely competent, immensely
strong, immensely alive. There was no
task too great for him. He thought

again of Beth. She would have shared
his excitement so completely . . .

He caught himself with a sharp
thought. The exhilaration was being
paid for by Berns. His emotion was
antisocial. He suppressed it quickly.

Effortlessly, he scooped up the body
and propped it into the diagnostic chair.
The chair straightened out into a table.
The Hedonist touched the under side of
the edge toward him. The shadowy X-
ray of the broken wrist was projected
onto the wall.

A slim, metal arm raised a horizontal
half-cylinder over the edge of the table.
It picked up the wrist. Gently, firmly, it
drew the broken bones apart and fitted
them back into position as the Hedonist
watched the wall picture. A tiny hypo-
dermic jet penetrated the skin above the
break. On the wall, the line between the
broken bones grew cloudy. A nozzle
spun a short, tight plastic cocoon around
the wrist. As the table tilted itself back
into a chair, the arm retreated back
into the chair’s base.

The Hedonist glanced at his watch.
Berns would have to wait. The case was
serious. It demanded time — a lot of
it — and the Hedonist didn’t have the
time to spare. In five minutes he was
due at the school.

He touched the desk. Berns’ head
twitched a little as a hypodermic forced
the anaesthetic through the skin into
the spinal column. Berns would have
to sleep here until he got back.

Outside, the Hedonist looked back.
The milky square on the door said:

THE HEDONIST IS OUT
IN REAL EMERGENCY
PUNCH WARD SCHOOL
(RRR 1764)

'T'HE Hedonist walked through his
ward in the warm, clear springtime,
enjoying the pleasant heat of the sun-
shine on his head and back, feeling a
brief moment of contentment. The ward
was a field of vari-colored mushrooms
set in a green meadow ; each of the bub-
ble houses had its small lawn.

M . • . out of the corner of his eye, the Hedonist caught a flicker of movement.
The walls of the booth fell through the floor. Behind the walls was the
motley of clowns. A dozen black subduers were pointed toward them. . , w

19

20 THRILLING WONDER STORIES

In the thirty-by-thirty vacant lot, the
long-nosed house-blower was spraying
plastic over a flat-topped balloon. Eliot
Digby lolled lazily in the cab, glancing
occasionaly at the unwavering dials. As
the Hedonist passed, Eliot looked up and
waved happily. The Hedonist smiled.
By next week the new house would be
ready for the Wayne' couple. He would
marry them the same day.

Basic School was a cluster of mush-
rooms in a bigger patch of green. When
the Hedonist walked through the broad
front door, the pretty ward nurse was
waiting for him. The Hedonist smiled
at her, thinking that the instruction of
the boys was in capable hands.

“Joy,” said the Hedonist.

“Joy,” echoed the Nurse, but she
looked anything but joyful. “We’ve had
more trouble about the dispensers in
the necessary.”

“The neo-heroin?”

The Nurse nodded.

“How many children have bought it?”
A frown slipped down over his face.

“None,” she said quickly. “I put a
recorder on the- dispenser, just as you
said, and only one syrette has been pur-
chased. That was by the salesman him-
self. But he was here this morning com-
plaining that someone was sabotaging
his sales. He said he was going to take
it to the council.”

The Hedonist shrugged. “If that’s
all—”

“But the Council has approved the
manufacture and distribution,” she went
on anxiously. “And half the profits have
been allocated "to the Council. The Coun-
cil has asked all the wards to cooperate,
and we’ve been doing just the oppo-
site — ”

“The Council; — the Council,” the
Hedonist chided. “The Council isn’t
some unfeeling, pre-hedonic bureau to
be afraid of; it’s made up of trained
men, hedonists, bent only on increasing
the available - happiness. But it’s not
infallible. In this turn toward delusion,
it has made a mistake. At the next Con-
gress, the mistake will be corrected.”

He was about to move on when he
turned back and asked, casually, “Did
you recognize the salesman?”

She beat her forehead in despair. “I
couldn’t think of his name. But I’ll re-
member it.”

The Hedonist smiled ; a poor mem-
ory was, her greatest sorrow. “Remem-
ber: anxiety is the thief of happiness.”
He patted her fondly and turned to-
ward the first class.

'T'HE morning’s lessons here like a
fairy tale turned upside down.

To the little ones, he said, “. . . And
so the world lived happily ever after.”
As he left the room, one little girl
pressed against his leg and lifted up
her shining face. “I love you, Hedonist,”
she whispered.

“I love you,” he said quietly and
smoothed her blond hair.

'T'O THE* beginners, he said, “What is
•*- the greatest good ?”

The class answered in unison: “Pleas-
ure!”

“What is the basic freedom?”

“The freedom to be happy !”

“Be happy, then,” the Hedonist said.
As he. left the room, they were sing-
ing the familiar sixth stanza to the
old folksong, “Turkey in the Straw” :
“Sugar in the gourd and honey in
the horn,

I never was so happy since the hour
I was horn.”

T O THE secondary class, he said,
“Who ca\i tell me what I am?”

One boy held up his hand eagerly.
“You’re our Hedonist.”

“And what is a hedonist?”

“He’s the man who keeps us happy.”
“Once I would have been called many
things,” the Hedonist said softly.
“Doctor, teacher, psychiatrist, priest,
philosopher, wardheeler, God-surrogate,
father-image, lover symbol. But none
of these did what I can do. Your defini-
tion is the best : I am the guardian of
your happiness.”

NAME YOUR PLEASURE 21

THO THE intermediate class, he threw
questions swiftly. “What are feel-
ings?”

The answers ran around the room
consecutively :

“Feelings are unique and unspecific.”
“They can’t be analyzed; when we
try, they disappear.”

“They can apply to any mental proc-
ess.”

“There are only two: pleasure and
unnpleasure.”

The Hedonist began again. “What
are em'otions?”

“Emotions are specific; they are con-
nected with a particular tendency to ac-
tion.”

“They are the result of blocked con-
ations ; conations are our striving to
get the things we want.”

“Our feelings are directly conditioned
by the success or failure of our cona-
tions.”

“And the moral of this,” the Hedonist
concluded, “is that we should want the
right things — the things we can get.
That is the royal road to happiness.”

HPO THE advanced class, he said, “Once
upon a time does not always begin a
happy story. It can describe the real
world we left behind us.”

Violent, painful desire, doomed to
frustration. A rapidly diminishing area
of possible satisfaction. Inevitable, daily
tragedy.

Want more ! Be more ! The pre-hedonic
world puffed stale air into the balloon
of desire; people were overpaid to in-
crease demand. Buy! Own! Enjoy! And
slyly the frustrations waited with their
pins in hand : laws, social pressures,
economics, physical impossibilities.

Illusions. “There’s plenty of room at
the top; only the bottom is crowded.”
Fallacy. Dangerous, deadly.

“Teach me to earn so that I may buy
so that I may ease this torment of de-
sire.” And no one could be found to say,
“Teach me to live so that I may be
happy.”

Poor, tortured world! World of trag-

edy, doomed to periodic violence, prid-
ing itself on being free.

Free. Free to make each other mis-
erable. Free to drive each other to in-
sanity and crime. Free to kill in mass
and individual slaughters. Free to de-
velop such stress diseases as stomach
cramps, rheumatoid arthritis, asthma,
duodenal ulcers, hypertension, heart dis-
ease, ulcerative colitis, and diabetes.
Free to fret themselves into an early
grave.

In 1950, thirty-three men out of ev-
ery one hundred thousand in the United
States committed suicide. That was
freedom.

“ ‘The function of government is, and
of right ought to be, the preservation
and promotion of the temporal happi-
ness of its citizens,’ ” the Hedonist
quoted.

The girl stood up, straight as a young
elm. “The Declaration of Hedonism.
December 31, 2003.”

“What was the April Fool Amend-
ment ?”

“The Twenty-sixth Amendment to the
Constitution came about three months
later. It made hedonism the law of the
land.”

IV

Happiness Is Practical

A S THE Hedonist followed the wind-
ing walk to the Graduate School,
the Nurse caught up with him.

“I’ve thought of the name,” she pant-
ed happily. “It’s Berns. Corner Berns. . .”
The Hedonist carried the implications
with him through the rest of his morn-
ing’s duties. He stood in front of the
Hedonic Mural and turned it over slowly
with part of his mind -while he went
through the discussion with the Gradu-
ate students.

Hedonics hadn’t happened overnight.
The philosophical consideration went
back more than two thousand years. The
Greeks asked themselves the question:
what is the greatest good? The answer

22 THRILLING WONDER STORIES

was "pleasure.” The philosophy was
hedonism.

Hedonics was, above all, practical. It
worked. But philosophy was only one
leg to the stool.

Means had to become available to re-
lieve the great psychological anxieties:
death, sickness, hunger, cold, and the
social relationships.

Geriatrics had reduced the fear of
death. Medical research had largely
wiped out sickness. No one needed to
go hungry while chlorella surged
through the polyethylene tubes and the
sea fixed 135 billion tons of carbon every
year. No one needed to go without shel-
ter when houses could be built over-
night.

Social relationships had been compli-
cated by antiquated mores and laws ; its
artificial barriers were guarded by so-
ciety’s poli'ceman — the conscience, which
punished the instinctive desires. The
barriers were torn away, the laws were
rewritten, and the policeman’s badge
was torn away.

Research into the physiology of the
human body brought out the exact re-
lationship between the glands and the
emotions and slowly brought them un-
der conscious control : the adrenals, the
pituitary, and the hypothalmus. The
development of that control into some-
thing effective and invaluable was the
function of the hedonic exercises; they
occupied a large part of the Graduate
School curriculum.

But the final development of hedon-
ism as a way of life waited on the dis-
covery of the hedometer, which brought
statistical significance into the intro-
spective fields of psychology and philos-
ophy. The simple device, which worked
through an application of the psycho-
galvanic reflex, became an integral part
of every room, and its constant reports
made possible a nationwide application
of the axiom : "That action is best which
procures the greatest happiness of the
greatest numbers.” - -

The wisdom the Hedonist tried to im-
part to the Graduate students was dia-

grammed upon the wall behind him.

The Hedonic Mural. To the left, a val-
ley; to the right, a mountain. At the
bottom of the valley was a low-pres-
sure mattress; a man was asleep on it,
curled into a fetal position. At the top
of the mountain was a naked woman,
her arms held out invitingly.

They were symbols, of course. The val-
ley was Reduced Desire. The mountain
was Increased Satisfaction. There are
two ways to be happy : want less or get
more. It was as simple as that.

There were trails leading to the top
of the mountain. Signposts pointed out
the way; they were hedonic techniques:
Modify and Substitute.

There were four paths into the val-
ley: Substitute, Devalue, Project, and
Suppress.

The valley and the mountain. And the
mountain, attractive as it seemed, was
relatively worthless. Reality will allow
only a very limited amount of modifi-
cation; population increases, limited as
control measures had made them, had
rationed the amount to the point of in-
significance. If a man allowed his hap-
piness to depend on it, he was dooming
himself to frustration.

In the valley of hedonic discipline was
found the heart of hedonics, untouched
and untouchable. Its techniques made
man independent of environmental va-
garies.

“As long as we have these techniques
available,” the Hedonist concluded,
“nothing — no one — can make us un-
happy. Like gods, we hold our happiness
in our own hands.”

T>ERNS was still unconscious, but the
neutralizer quickly made him stir in
the chair. His dark, deepset eyes opened
and stared blankly at the Hedonist.
Slowly, they drew memory from a secret
place.

His face twisted. His right hand
groped, lifted — Pain twitched across his
face. He stared down at the cast on his
wrist. Tentatively he wriggled his fin-
gers.

NAME YOUR PLEASURE 23

The Hedonist stooped and picked up
the knife. He looked down at it for a
moment. He handed it to Berns, hilt
first. “Is this what you’re looking
for?” he asked politely.

Berns licked his lips. “Yeah,” he said.
He took the knife and then held it awk-
wardly as if he couldn’t decide what to
do with it.

“Why do you want to kill me?” the
Hedonist said quietly.

“Because,” Berns said. “Because of
what you done to me.”

“And what’s that? Whatever it is, if
I can help — ”

“What’s done’s done,” Berns said sud-
lenly.

“That’s a pre-hedonic attitude,” the
Hedonist said. “It isn’t what happens
that’s important; it’s how that affects
us. But what are you talking about?”

“My wife,” Berns said. “I’m talking
about her.”

The Hedonist remembered. Just be-
fore moving to the ward, Berns had mar-
ried one of his dependents — a. young
girl, not quite out of her teens. There
was nothing basically wrong with that.
Geriatrics had kept Berns’ body young.
Hedonics should have done the same
thing for the man who lived inside. And
yet — Berns had attacked him with a
knife.

Dani Farrell. The Hedonist remem-
bered her. A quiet girl, a quick, inter-
ested student. With her, hedonics had
worked well. She w r as a happy woman,
not deep but sound. He had never ex-
pected complaints.

“What’s the matter with Dani?” the
Hedonist asked.

“You know.” Berns’s eyes slid away.

“She’s made you unhappy?” the Hed-
onist asked.

“Not her — she’s all right!”

“Then what is the matter?”

“She knows too much,” Berns blurted
out.

“You’re complaining about that? See
here,” the Hedonist said with sudden
suspicion, “is there something wrong
with your sexual adjustment?”

Berns shifted uneasily. “That’s what
I’m complaining about. With my first
wife, it took years. Dani didn’t come to
me — well— innocent !”

“Innocent!” the Hedonist exclaimed.
“You mean ‘ignorant.’ You’re objecting
to her education !”

“Some things,” Berns said, glower-
ing. “a man should attend to personal.”
The Hedonist’s face grew stern and
then was molded by compassion. The
man was sick. He had missed the bene-
fits of a hedonic education, and his pre-
vious hedonist had been lax or over-
worked.

He straightened up. These ante-hed-
onics cases were tough, but he had
cracked them before. “What you want,”
he said slowly, “is the right to make
yourself unhappy and Dani miserable
for an outmoded, demonstrably false set
of values.”

“Well,” Berns asked defiantly, “what’s
wrong with that?”

The Hedonist glanced down at the
desk and back up. “It’s antisocial,” the
Hedonist said quietly. “Society can’t per-
mit it.”

“This is a free country, ain’t it?”
Berns demanded. “A man can be unhap-
py if he wants to be, can’t he?”

“No!” the Hedonist thundered. “That
myth was exploded fifty years ago. The
basic freedom is the freedom to be
happy. Society must preserve it above
all the others, because without it the
others are worthless.”

“The way I look at it,” Berns said
sullenly, “it ain’t a freedom unless a
man can do something else.”

The Hedonist shook his head slowly,
patiently. He would have to start from
the beginning. “If people had the right
to be unhappy, they would threaten the
happiness of everyone else. Men don’t
live in a vacuum. Fundamentally, per-
haps, everyone has the right to go to
hell in his own way, but there are boun-
daries beyond which a man can’t go
without injuring his neighbors. That’s
society’s business — establishing those
boundaries and setting watchdogs to

24 THRILLING WONDER STORIES

guard them. When a man crosses them,
he becomes a criminal.”

"But that don’t explain Dani,” Berns
said.

“Be sensible, man,” the Hedonist de-
manded. “Would you have us teach a
girl all the domestic and marital ac-
complishments except the one that’s
most important to the happiness of her
marriage? Vital training like that can’t
be left to anyone. You’re no hedonist.
What are your qualificationis as a teach-
er?”

“J’m going to file suit,” Berns mut-
tered. “You’ve infringed on my happi-
ness.”

The Hedonist exploded. “You’ve got
no grounds. What’s more, you’ve com-
mitted a criminal act. For what you’ve
done today, I could certify you for sur-
gery. In fact, that’s my duty.”

Berns looked bewildered. “You’re go-
ing to operate on me?”

“You’re obviously unhappy,” the
Hedonist pointed out. “According to so-
ciety’s standards, you’re insane. You
should be treated and converted into a
happy, responsible member of society.
A transorbital lobotomy is the quickest,
surest method.”

Berns struggled to his feet, his face
twisted with fear. “No!” he said. You
can’t. They won’t ’let you — ”

“They?” the Hedonist asked. “Who
are ‘they?’ ”

“People,” Berns muttered.

That was a lie. “You wouldn’t argue
with society’s right to treat the insane.
But I didn’t say that was what I was
going to do.”

Berns mumbled something indistin-
guishable.

"You need to understand my job,”
the Hedonist said. “Like me, you grew
up before hedonics became part of every-
day life. Like me, your training for hap-
piness began too late, when you were
already past the formative years of your
childhood. For the new generation, hap-
piness will come easy; they have been
prepared for it. We have to work for it.”

“How do you mean?”

“For me, it meant ten years of special-
ized training in the Institute of Applied
Hedonics. Since then it has meant a job
that is never done, the guardianship of
a thousand people.

“For you, it means study, beginning
this afternoon. As a salesman, I pre-
sume you can take time off?”

Berns started and then nodded. He’s
afraid , the Hedonist thought in amaze-
ment.

“Then this afternoon,” the Hedonist
said, as he installed Berns in the neces-
sary on the one seat available, “you’re
going to observe.”

But as the Hedonist left the sliding
door a little ajar and returned to his
desk, he thought: Why did the man reg-
ister fear when I mentioned his busi-
ness? ,

V

The Hedonist Needs Help

A FTER the unusual morning, it was
a usual sort of day. The stream of
patients was unending, and the variety
of their needs touched the Hedonist
often with pathos. A man who was not
a god should not have such power nor
be burdened with such responsibilities.

And he wielded the power and shoul-
dered the responsibility.

Medical treatment was easy and fast ;
the diagnostic chair fixed breaks and
scrapes, gave immunization and curative
shots, adjusted endocrine balances, pre-
scribed diets, treated or removed can-
cers and tumors, tinkered with faulty
organs.

The complaints and applications were
more difficult : Three oldsters complained
about their pensions and the high cost
of living. There was one case of techno-
logical unemployment; the Hedonist ar-
ranged to have the man reeducated and
reassigned and vouchered the cost to the
industry concerned. There were five
applications for pregnancy certificates;
the Hedonist put them off as best he
could: the year’s quota for the ward

NAME YOUR PLEASURE 25

Was already exhausted.

But the ones that took time, patience,
and skill were the hedonic cases.

Case No. 1: Unfulfilled Ambition (to
write tragedy,).

Therapy : Devalue and Substitute

(“But, if that is impossible, write if
you must — I will read it, and then we
will burn it together; you can’t be per-
mitted to make others unhappy”).

Case No. 2: Accidental Death (of a
father)

Therapy: Suppress (“Don’t let casual
events determine your happiness; that
is something for you alone to control”)

Case No. 3: Jealousy (of a husband)

Therapy: Suppress (“I can prepare
an infringement suit if you like, but I
ask you to think : how many times have
you been to the postmarital cottage?”)

Case No. 4: (Envy of a neighbor’s
new red house)

Therapy: Devalue ...

They were all simple — in theory. They
were all difficult in application. Not one
of the cases was classic. Each one
needed individual therapy.

Only one incident was disturbing.
During a treatment he felt a sudden
moment of dizziness. He concealed it
from the patient, but he got a quick di-
agnosis as soon as she was gone. All the
readings were normal. He was in per-
fect condition. He shook his head un-
easily.

As 1600 approached and passed, the
unease grew. The Hedonist couldn’t lo-
calize it. Then, with a start, he remem-
bered his appointment with the Council.

He remembered, too, the call he had
forgotten to make. He punched Beth’s
number. Her mother’s face appeared on
the wall. A beautiful face. Only an in-
ner maturity distinguished it from
Beth’s. She smiled inquiringly at the
Hedonist.

“Beth,” the Hedonist said. “Is she
there?”

“Why, no!” She started to frown.
“Beth hasn’t been home for days. I
thought—”

The Hedonist erased the anxiety has-

tily. “Of course. She has been here. But
she went out this morning. Perhaps she’s
with her young man — ”

“Young man?” The frown returned.
“Beth hasn’t any young man.”

“She hasn’t?” the Hedonist said
blankly. “That’s strange.” And then hur-
riedly, “Of course. How stupid of me to
forget!” His face cleared. He had to
protect Beth’s mother from worry. Al-
most magically, her frown was wiped
away.

The Hedonist stared at the blank wall
for a minute after she said good-by. He
could deceive her, but he couldn’t deceive
himself. Beth had lied to him. There
had to be a reason for it. After a little
concentration, he began to believe it.

He walked to the necessary in two
strides and slid the door back. The cubi-
cle was empty. He stepped into the little
room and turned around dazedly. There
was, obviously, no one in it except him-
self. No one could have squeezed into
the room when he was there.

And yet Berns was gone. The man
was gone, and the Hedonist had not
left the room, and Berns could not have
brushed past him in getting to the only
exit unless he was invisible —

The Hedonist remembered the mo-
ment of dizziness.

A time-lapse grenade!

He hunted around on the floor until
he found the few shreds of plastic left
from the explosion of the gas container.
He turned them over slowly in his hand.

Berns was gone. Why? He had ob-
tained a time-lapse grenade. How? He
had used it to leave the room without
being seen. Why? When? The Hedonist
estimated the time he had felt dizzy. It
had been almost an hour ago.

For once the hedonic techniques were
no good. This was no time for suppres-
sion, devaluation, substitution. He had
to think and think clearly. Very soon
he might have to modify the outer real-
ity, and he needed facts to guide him.

But there were so few facts. The rest
was assumption. Berns was only partly
what he seemed to be. His story was

26 THRILLING WONDER STORIES

l .

only partly true. He had some relation-
ship with the Council, and the Council
had summoned the Hedonist on the day
that Berns had attacked. Berns would
have to be reported' and certified.

The Hedonist filled out a certification
form and backdated it to the time Berns
was installed in the necessary. He hunt-
ed through the cabinets behind the wall
panels until he found what he wanted.
He pressed them against his chest and
back under the shirt, slipped a small
disk into his pocket, and turned toward
the door.

The idling cab was waiting two feet
above the street. It was 1615, as the
Hedonist looked back at his door to
check the milky square:

THE HEDONIST IS UNAVAILABLE
FOR EMERGENCY TREATMENT
SEE WARD 482 HEDONIST

He climbed up into the helijet. The
rotors sighed overhead.

“Where to?” the cabbie asked softly.

“Hedonic Council Building,” the
Hedonist said, staring curiously at the
red cap covering the cabbie’s head.

The cabbie swung around. “Great sor-
row, man! You aren’t going there!”

The Hedonist stared at the cabbie’s
face, stunned.

It was Beth.

44W7'HAT are you — I mean — how did

** you — ?” the Hedonist spluttered.

“I rented the heli — ”

“But you’re under age!”

“I forged an IDisk,” Beth said impa-
tiently, her dark eyes brilliant.

“Forged!” the Hedonist repeated
slowly. He rejected the word automati-
cally. He couldn’t believe that one of his
young people could have committed a
criminal act, and it was impossible to
forge an identity disk. The plastic locket
with its radiation-sensitive heart of
phosphate glass could not be duplicated.
Or so he had always believed.

“See here,” he said, struggling to get
off the defensive, “you said you were
getting married — ”

“I am,” she said with quiet determina-
tion.

“Your parents don’t know about it!”
“Oh, I haven’t told them.”

“I suppose,” the Hedonist said with
quiet sarcasm, “that you haven’t told
the man either.”

“He knows,” she said softly. “But he
doesn’t believfe it yet.”

“You lied to me.” In spite of himself,
the Hedonist’s voice sounded hurt.

“You poor, blind fool!” Beth said des-
perately. “Look! It doesn’t matter. Not
now. The only thing that matters is to
stay away from the Council. Don’t keep
that appointment !”

“The appointment !” the Hedonist ex-
claimed. He looked at his watch. It was
1620. “I’ve got to hurry.”

“That’s what I’m trying to — ”

“Are you going to take me?” the
Hedonist asked, “or shall I call another
cab?”

“Oh, I’ll take you,” she groaned,
swinging around to the front. She
punched the buttons expertly. With a
muffled roar, the heli rose vertically.
When it reached two thousand feet, the
jets cut off at the rotor tips and the rear
jets cut in. They streaked toward the Old
City, rising like a picket fence on the
horizon.

The only sound in the cabin was a gen-
tle vibration. The Hedonist sat silent,
turning words over and peering under
them: forgery, deceit, disrespect. Was
the younger generation capable of this?
If these hedonically trained young peo-
ple were not free from immoral and
criminal tendencies, then hedonics was
a failure.

“How did you know,” he asked, “that
I was going to the Council Building?”
“I’ve been watching all day.”
“Spying!” the Hedonist said with hor-
ror in his voice.

She shrugged. “If you want to call it
that. A good thing, too.”

“What do you mean?”

“That man. The one who called him-
self Gomer Berns. He was an agent of
the Council.”

NAME YOUR PLEASURE 27

An agent. The Hedonist tasted the
word gingerly. It had extensions and im-
plications. “How do you know?”

“He’s been watching you for- days.
And I’ve been watching him. He’s talked
to the Council secretary three times,
once in person. Then, today, he staged
this scene.”

“How do you know what he was talk-
ing about?”

“I wired the cottage days ago,” she
said disgustedly. “When he tossed out
the grenade and sneaked away, I was
afraid it might be something more dead-
ly. Then I realized what it was. I fol-
lowed him, but I wasn’t quite quick
enough.”

“For what?”

“He’d already dropped the tape into
the mail tube.”

“Tape?”

Beth reached onto the seat beside her
and flicked something over the back of
the seat into the Hedonist’s lap. He
picked it up and frowned at it. It was a
flat, opaque, plastic box about half an
inch deep, two inches wide, and three
inches long. The back was sticky. He
turned it over. Projecting a fraction be-
yond the box was Berne’s clear, plastic
I Disk.

He turned it back over, bewildered.
Something clicked and moved under his
fingers. The box fell open. Inside was
a tiny empty reel; there was a spindle
for another. Printed circuits, were a
maze against the plastic.

The thing was a miniature recorder,
equipped to pick up both sight and
.sound. The lens— for some reason — had
been disguised as an IDisk. Gomer
Berns’s IDisk.

“Where did you get this?” he asked
suddenly.

“Where do you suppose?”

A sudden flash of apprehension turned
the Hedonist’s stomach cold. “You said
he was an agent. What did you — ”

“He’s dead,” Beth said calmly.

TpOR a moment, the Hedonist wondered
■*- whether the heli had plunged out of

control, and then his hedonic reflexes
caught him and set him firmly back in
place. His pulse slowed, his adrenals
stopped discharging. “You killed him,”
he said.

“Yps ”

“Why?”

“It was an accident, I suppose,” she
said thoughtfully, “although I can’t say
for certain. I was mad enough to kill
him. I tried to stop him from dropping
the tape, you see, and he pulled out a
knife. The cast made him clumsy. When
I twisted his arm, he stabbed himself.”
“Go back! Quick!” the Hedonist
shouted. “He might still be alive.”

She shook her head. “He’s dead all
right.”

The Hedonist groaned and passed his
hand over his face. “I’ll have to certify
you for surgery,” he heard his voice
staying distantly. “No!” he told himself,
sitting up straight again. “I can’t do
it.”

Beth sighed. “1 was hoping you would
say that. It’s all right. Nobody saw me.”
The Hedonist shuddered. He couldn’t
believe the immorality he was hearing.
“You’ll have to undergo treatment,” he
said nervously.

Beth laughed. “All you want.”

The Hedonist looked down at his
hands. He still held the recorder. He
shuddered again, pressed the button that
reeled down the right window, and
tossed the plastic thing through. He
watched it spin through the air until
it disappeared below. He wiped his
hands on his shorts as if to cleanse them
of an invisible stain. Forgery, deceit,
theft and murder. But the stain would
not come off. It was his fault. It was his
duty to protect the bewildered girl. For
a wild moment he found himself think-
ing of how lovely she had been when
they awoke only that morning — of how
she looked in his scarlet pajama tops.

“Now,” she said, sounding not at all
bewildered, “you see why you can’t keep
that appointment with the Council.”
He came back to reality. “Because you
killed Berns?”

28 THRILLING WONDER STORIES

“No, because he was their agent. Can’t
you see what they’re trying to do? They
want to certify you — ”

“They can’t do that,” the Hedonist
protested. “I’m not unhappy.”

“When they get through with you,”
Beth said grimly, “you will be.”

“But why— they’ve got no reason — ”
“When have they needed a reason?
They want to get rid of you. Why, I
don’t know. But there could be a hun-
dred reasons. For some reasons you’re
dangerous to them. If you w r ant to stay
alive, you’ve got to stop judging every-
one else by yourself.” ~

It was a web of nonsense. The Hedon-
ist didn’t believe a word of it. Beth had
lied to him before without raising her
blood pressure a fraction of a point.
She was capable of anything. It had to
be lies.

But there had been-gelatin fragments
on his floor. And he had held a minia-
ture recorder in his hands, and it had
a lens shaped like an IDisk. Or had he?
Was it delusion ?

He glanced at his watch: 1629.

r F'HE Council Building was a flat-
topped spire a thousand feet below.
He could see the large “HC” painted
across the roof. Around it were the
deep, darkening canyons that separated
the buildings from its shorter neigh-
bors.

The Old City was little frequented
now. Industry was decentralized into
small, automatic factories near their
markets, and the population had spread
far out into almost autonomous sub-
urbs. The parts of the Old City left
standing were used only for the func-
tions arid services which could not be
decentralized : government, major hos-
pitals, and interplanetary commerce.
“Take me down,” the Hedonist said.
“But — ” Beth began, swinging around
frantically.

“Down!” he repeated firmly. “I have
an appointment in four minutes. I’m
going to keep it.” He had to accept it as
reality, not delusion. But he was ready

for the Council, if he could get Beth
away and out of danger.

She sighed hopelessly. “All right.”
She punched buttons savagely. The rear
jets cut out. They dropped in a long
swooping descent that clutched the Hed-
onist’s throat, but at the last minute
the rotor’s tip jets caught and the heli
dropped lightly to the roof.

The little devil! the Hedonist thought.
She did that on purpose. “Go home!”
he said, stepping down from the cab and
standing on the roof. The rotors twisted
slowly above his head. “Tell your moth-
er to give you an alibi for the time of
Berns’ death.”

“An alibi?” she asked. “What’s that?”

The diabolical innocent! “A statement
that you were home at that time. She’s
to lie about it. Tell her I said so. And
tell her to make herself believe that it’s
true. As for you — Don’t worry ! I’ll take
care of everything.”

“Yes, Hedonist,” she said obediently.

“Now get out of here!” he said brut-
ally. “I don’t want to see you again.”
He knew he was lying and the knowl-
edge troubled him. He did want to see
her again.

He stepped back before he could see
the expression on her face, and he
watched the heli lift from the roof. The
rear jets caught quickly with an orange
flame that swiftly turned blue and then
became a mere wavering of the air.

Except for' him, the paved roof was
empty. The Hedonist turned and walked
to the elevator housing. As he ap-
proached, the doors slid open. He stepped
in, turned to face the front, and thq
doors began to close.

“Twent — ” he began, but before he
had finished, the car started down.

The Hedonist counted the floors as
they flashed by. He counted backwards
from seventy-five, swiftly, for the drop
was faster than the one in the heli. When
he reached thirty-tw. 0 , the car slowed
suddenly. “Thirty-one,” he counted.
“Thirty. Twenty-nine.”

On that number, the elevator stopped.
The Hedonist considered the implica-

NAME YOUR PLEASURE 2 *

tions. Without instructions from him,
the elevator had brought him to the
twenty-ninth floor. That was true effi-
ciency. But then the Council was effi-
cient.

The door remained closed. It refused
to open. The Hedonist looked at his
watch : 1633. When the sweep second
hand reached the top of the dial and
went a little past, the doors parted.

Real precision, the Hedonist thought,
and stepped out into a deserted hallway.

There were doors on both sides of the
corridor, but 2943 was opposite the ele-
vator. There was a sign pn the door.
Like his own, it said: COME IN. AND
BE HAPPY.

On the door at waist level was a but-
ton. The Hedonist shrugged and pushed
it. The door slid open. The room beyond
was an ordinary waiting room, well-
lighted, neat. Ch'airs lined each wall.
Beside an inner door was a desk. The
room was deserted.

The place was silent. Completely, abso-
lutely silent. The only sound the Hedon-
ist could hear was his breathing and
the internal workings of his body.

He stepped into the room.

He stepped into bedlam.

VI

The Bedlam Test

T HE sound was deafening. That was
the first thing he noticed. Or, no, it
wasn’t the first thing. The sound was
even louder because his eyes had
squeezed shut automatically at the first
flash of brightness. He waited and felt
behind him with one hand. The wall was
smooth. The door was closed.

The noise, he thought, was a record-
ing of every sound ever made. He could
hear drums, hammers, a chorus of ma-
chines; he heard raspings, scrapings,
gratings, screeches, horns, explosions,
voices screams, shouts.

He concentrated on identifying the
sound, not shutting it out. It seemed to
cover the whole range of audibility,

from 15 cycles per second to more than
20,000 cycles. It was loudest, though,
in the middle high tones. That was natu-
ral enough. The ear was most sensitive
for those fi'equencies.

Question: was the sound objective or
subjective?

Unless it had been set off by his step-
ping into the room, it had to be sub-
jective. Not even the finest interrupter
could phase out everything. And he
hadn’t heard a sound.

Ordinarily, the tympanic muscles
would have contracted reflexively to
protect the inner ear. They hadn’t. Pre-
sumption: his sensitivity had been in-
creased or the receptors of the inner
ear themselves w 7 ere being stimulated.

He concentrated on the 1,000 to 4,000
cycle range and reduced the sensitivity
of the ear. Slowly the sound diminished.
What he had been hearing was the mo-
lecular motion of the air particles it-
self.

He could hear the voice now. He tried
to distinguish the w r ords. Slowly he
made it out.

“This is a test,” the voice said. “Find
your way to the inner room. When you
open that door, the test will be over.
Thr test can be discontinued any time
you wish. If you desire to do so, lie dowm
on the floor and cover your eyes and
ears.”

The Hedonist did not even consider
the possibility. It was not only against
his nature to surrender, but he suspect-
ed that passing the test was vital.

Slowly he opened his eyes, squinting
to keep dow r n the intolerable glare. But
the light had dimmed. As he opened his
eyes wider, the light flared up, and the
eyes snapped shut. He opened them a
slit; the light was dim and gray.' He
opened them a little wider; the light
blazed. The light — or his sensitivity to
it — was keyed to the width his eyes
were opened. After a little experimen-
tation, he discovered the optimum width
w'hich admitted the most light without
risking blindness.

The room had changed. It w r as no

30 THRILLING WONDER STORIES

longer a waiting room. It was his own
room, and he was leaning so far back-
ward that he was going to fall over into
the necessary. He caught himself and
straightened up and almost pitched for-
ward on his face.

Illusion, he told himself. The room
tilted, not me. But it was more difficult
to convince his eyes of their mistake.

Which way had the inner door been
when he looked into the room from the
corridor? If this was the same room,
and his senses brought him only illu-
sions, the door was directly in front of
him about four paces. He hadn’t moved.

He felt behind him again to make
sure. His hand dipped to the wrist in
semi-liquid slime. He smelt a strong
odor of decay.

He pulled out his hand, resisting the
impulse to shake off the slime, and took
one step forward, concentrating on the
testimony of his semicircular canals
and the sense organs in the muscles, ten-
dons, joints, and skin. The room blinked
and changed.

TTE WAS on a blue desert. The sand
was harsh and gritty under his feet.
The scorching wind picked it up and
threw it against his face and into his
eyes. He could taste it, strong and alka-
line, between his teeth. Overhead a huge,
orange sun burned down on him.

The Hedonist ignored everything. He
didn’t blink or rub his face or eyes or
try to cover his head. He knew what he
was experiencing now. This was the
sensies without the cumbersome equip-
ment they needed. This was sensation
transmitted to the nerves themselves.
But as long as he refused to believe in
the reality of the illusion, he had beaten
thp test.

Question: what would the next scene
be?

Something stirred behind one of the
blue dunes. The Hedonist didn’t wait
to find out what it was. He took another
step, concentrating, as before, on the
kinesthetic report of his leg and hip
muscles to keep him moving in a straight

line.

The floor rocked under him. It quiv-
ered like gelatin. It was insecurity. There
were tall buildings all around him. They
were tumbling. He could smell dust in
the air. Great masses of masonry were
shaken from the buildings by the earth-
quake, and they fell toward him, turn-
ing, growing larger . . .

TTE TOOK another step. Now he was
falling. He was turning and twisting
through the air, hurtling toward the dis-
tant pavement. Air became resistant,
buffeted him, tugged at his clothes. The
pavement came up to meet him. . .

He took another step. Everything
went black. He stood still, trying to see
and there was nothing to see, trying to
pierce the meaning of the illusion. Or
was it an illusion?

The fears the test had played on had
not been the learned fears but the old
fears, the instinctive ones: the familiar
twisted, the completely alien, falling
things, and the firm Earth shaking, fall-
ing. Baby fears, never forgotten.

What now? Only the dark?

Close to the floor, something hissed.
Something moved over his foot, slowly.
Something long and thin. There was a
second hiss. A third. Things brushed
against his bare legs.

Snakes! the Hedonist thought. Snakes
in the dark!

Slowly they became luminescent. They
glowed in the darkness, lifting in front
of him, weaving wickedly. They were
all colors: green, red, blue, violet, yel-
low, orange. One of the snakes was
poising itself to strike.

The Hedonist reached out and pressed
its diamond-shaped head.

The door opened.

'T'HREE men were sitting at the far

end of a long table. They looked
young, but the youngest of them, the
Hedonist knew, was ten years older than
he was. They had been the first men
elected to the Council ; they had held of-
fice ever since.

NAME YOUR PLEASURE 31

The room was big and windowless,
paneled in dark, imitation wood. On
the right wall was a door, which should
be a necessary. There was a faint glim-
mering in the air in front of the Coun-
cil. It could be nothing else but a mis-
sile-barrier. It would be airtight, too.
The Council was being very careful.

The chairman sat at the very end. He
had a pleasant blond face. He was a
simple, not particularly intelligent man,
who could never have become a hedonist

lessly, “who cannot control himself, can-
not help his patients.”

“A truism,” the Hedonist agreed.

“Look,” the chairman said, and moved
his hand.

The Hedonist was looking at himself.
He was standing just inside the wait-
ing room, his eyes closed. He opened
his eyes, blinked several times, and
leaned forward and then upright. A lit-
tle awkwardly, but not too slowly, he
walked across the floor. He reached out

and pressed the button on the door. He
vanished. The experience had taken less
than a minute.

The Hedonist looked at the Council.
That was it, then. They had wanted evi-
dence for a sanity trial. There was no
indication of outside stimulation. If he
had reacted to the illusion or if he had
given up, he would have been lost. But
they had won nothing.

“Are you happy, hedonist?” the chair-
man asked.

“Certainly,” the Hedonist said. “I
presume that this is being recorded.”

The chairman nodded curtly.

“What kind of job have you been do-
ing in your ward?”

except by legislation.

To his left was the treasurer, a dark,
brooding man of unfathomable moods.
The Hedonist would have liked to have
had him in his diagnostic chair for a few
minutes.

To the chairman’s right was the sec-
retary, a blank, nondescript, expres-
sionless person, but the Hedonist re-
ceived a subtle impression of tremen-
dous control. He was the one to watch.

“Joy, hedonists,” the Hedonist said
cheerfully. “I hope I haven’t kept you
waiting.”

“Sit down,” said the treasurer, mo-
tioning to the chair.

“A hedonist,” the secretary said tone-

32 THRILLING WONDER STORIES

“A man is his own worst critic,” the
Hedonist said modestly. “But if you
must have an answer, I think my work
has been adequate. But you have better
indicators than that. What has my ward
averaged on the Hedonic Index? For
the record.”

There was a moment of silence.
“Ninety-seven,” the secretary said.

The Hedonist was surprised. “So
high? I’ve done a better job than I
thought.”

“You haven’t certified anyone for
surgery in more than a year,” the treas-
urer pointed out.

“There you’re mistaken,” the Hedon-
ist said. “I certified someone this morn-
ing.” He glanced casually at the three
faces at the other end of the table. “A
man named. Gomer Berns.” At least he
had that on the record.

Two faces were politely interested;
the secretary blinked once, impassively.
“So?” he said. “We haven’t received the
certification yet.”

“No doubt it’s being processed,” the
Hedonist said easily.

“No doubt,” the secretary said. “An
interesting statement, in view of this.”
His hand slichalong the arm of his chair.

This record wasn’t as realistic as the
other. The film flickered, and the sound
wavered. But it was interesting. It was
a record of the Hedonist’s day as seen
through the IDisk of Gomer Berns.

It started with Berns’ entrance and
ended with his departure under the cover
of the time-lapse grenade. The Hedonist
watched himself at work with a trace
of self-consciousness, but he didn’t have
to suppress it. It vanished before the
realization of the fantastic speed with
which the Council had acted. The rec-
ord had been edited skillfully, almost
damningly.

“Interesting, eh?” the secretary
isked.

“Very. Especially as evidence of in-
fringement of happiness. Consider this
notification of intent to file — ”

“Nonsense,” the chairman interrupt-
ed. “The Council is immune to suit — ”

“Since when?” the Hedonist asked
quickly.

“Since February 18, 2054,” the sec-
retary said flatly. “You received noti-
fication of the legislation, just as every
other hedonist did. If you had attended
the last Congress, you would have taken
part in the voting.”

The Hedonist was silent. There was
only so many hours in a day. It had
seemed better to let the interminable
Hedonic Record tapes go unheard than
tp leave a patient untreated and un-
happy. It had seemed preferable to skip
the usually uneventful Congress than to
leave his ward untended for several
days.

“You have abrogated the basic prin-
ciples of hedonism,” the Hedonist said
slowly, evenly, “and hedonism cannot
long survive. The moment one man or
group of men is raised above the laws,
the laws become worthless. The basic
freedom is the freedom to be happy.
Anyone who infringes upon it is a crim-
inal, not above but beyond the laws — ”
“You may stop mouthing these phras-
es,” the secretary said quietly. .“We are
the guardians of their meanings. Be-
sides — ” he shrugged — “the recorder
has been cut off for several seconds.”
“How then,” the Hedonist asked pa-
tiently, “do you hope to establish the
record as authentic?”

The chairman’s eyes opened wide,
blue, and innocent. “We will certify it.
How else?”

Above the law, above the law, the
Hedonist repeated endlessly to himself.
It was an accompaniment to the sound
of his world collapsing around him.

“Just,” the treasurer growled, “as
we will certify you.”

66/~\N WHAT grounds?” the Hedonist
asked quickly.

The treasurer shrugged. “The neces-
sary grounds. Unhappiness. Maladjust-
ment. Malfeasance, misfeasance — ”

“I’ll fight it,” the Hedonist told them
calmly. “You can never justify the
charges. Not with the Hedonic Index

NAME YOUR PLEASURE 33

of my ward.”

“When a prima facie case of illegal
therapy, distortion of legal therapy, or
disregard of proper therapy, can be
made on the basis of direct evidence,”
the secretary said dryly, “the Index is
inadmissible and rebuttal is worthless.”
“You’ve revoked the principle of au-
tonomy, too,” the Hedonist observed.
He shook his head. “You can’t standard-
ize happiness. Every person is an indi-
vidual case. Publilius Syrus said it a
long time ago: you can’t put the same
shoe on every foot.”

“It seems,” the secretary said, “that
you haven’t read the Journal of Hedonics
lately either. It explicitly analyzed, con-
tradicted, and exposed the fallacy of
your argument. The official position of
hedonism has been laid down : hedonics
is a true science, not an art.”

“You’ve discovered a calculus of
pleasure?”

“It’s the corollary of the process you
just experienced,” the secretary said
darkly. “We can reduce pleasure to a
common denominator by reliable physi-
cal means. No longer do we have to be
content with ninety-seven per cent hap-
piness. We can achieve one hundred per-
cent happiness any time we wish for as
long as we wish.”

“By machine.”

“That is the beauty of it,” the secre-
tary said. For the first time there was
life in his voice. “The means are one
hundred percent controllable, one hun-
dred per cent reliable. The sensations
you experienced were real and horrible ;
the sensations we can project can be
real and wonderful. We don’t need to
reduce desire any longer. We can in-
crease desire and match it with in-
creased satisfaction. We have reached
the millenium.”

“But it’s not real.” The Hedonist
shook his head grimly. “Systematized
delusion. Madness mechanized. I see
what you intend. Those who disobey
will be punished; those who obey will
be rewarded by the projector. You are
bringing back the two-valued world. On

the one side, the hell of the mindless,
on the other, the heaven of the mad. I
wash my hands of it, gentlemen — I no
longer call you ‘hedonists.’ I’m through
with you.”

“But,” the secretary said evenly, “we
aren’t through with you. Because of
your services to hedonism, we are going
to be kmd. You are going to have your
choice of happiness: you may have your
desires reduced by surgery or your sat-
isfactions increased by the projector.”
“Hobson’s choice,” the Hedonist mut-
tered. He looked from face to face. They
were determined to get rid of him. “But
why?” he burst out. “Tell me that!”
“You’ve infringed on our happiness,”
the chairman said simply.

“I?” the Hedonist exclaimed. “How?”
“One,” the chairman said, “you’ve
cut off your ward’s trade in neo-heroin.
The income is vital to the proper func-
tioning of government — ”

“It’s dangerous stuff,” the Hedonist
interrupted. “It leads to unpleasure and
a reduction of real happiness — ”
“Two,” the chairman continued as if
the Hedonist hadn’t spoken, “you have
been nominated for a place on this Coun-
cil. If elected, you would replace one of
us — and that would be unpleasure, sir!
- — and you would upset our plans for the
future happiness of Earth. — ”

“But I had no idea — ” the Hedonist
began. “I haven’t even been to the Con-
gress — I don’t want any such—”

“Your lack of ambition is unimpor-
tant,” the secretary said, shrugging,
“except as it affects your own happi-
ness.” He moved his hand along the
chair. “We have given you an oppor-
tunity: choose!”

“And what if I should tell you,” the
Hedonist said suddenly, “that I have
been recording this discussion, that the
record is in a safe place, and that it will
not be used unless this proceeding con-
tinues?”

“It wouldn’t matter,” the secretary
said, unmoved. “This room is shielded.”
He cocked his head as if he were listen-
ing. “At any rate, your cottage has just

34 THRILLING WONDER STORIES

been destroyed.”

"I suspected as much,” the Hedonist
sighed. “And so I didn’t try.” His face
suddenly grew pale. “Gentlemen — I find
that — this discussion — has suddenly —
made me ill. If you will — indicate — the
necessary — ?”

Automatically, in the face of the
Hedonist’s obvious distress, tfee chair-
man nodded toward the door in the right
wall. The Hedonist pushed himself up,
cupped his hand to his mouth, and stag-
gered toward the door.

The secretary followed him with un-
readable eyes. “Don’t forget,” he sug-
gested, “that this is the twenty-ninth
floor.”

VIII'

Up and Over

T HE Hedonist nodded dumbly, mis-
erably, slipped through the doorway
as the door slid aside, and turned to close
it behind him. The necessary, almost
twice as big as his cubicle at home, was
decorated in antiseptically clean white
tile. But the door had no lock on it.

The Hedonist’s face had returned, mi-
raculously, to its normal, healthy color;
his breath came quickly but easily. His
hand came out of a pocket. The thin,
flat disk was in it. He moved it quickly
around the edge of the doorway, stopped,
slid it back a few inches, and pressed it
to the wall.

When he took his hand away, the
disk clung to the wall. He pressed the
button beside the door. The door didn’t
budge.

The Hedonist turned around. As he
had suspected, the room had a frosted
window. He slipped off one shoe,
wrapped his hand in the shirt he had
removed, and swung the shoe against
the window with all his strength. It
shattered almost explosively.

As soon as the pieces had stopped
falling, the Hedonist looked through
the jagged hole. The sun was gone ; twi-
light was settling over the Old City ; the

canyons were dark, shadowed places
of mystery. He knocked loose some of
the lower pieces and looked down. The
street was a narrow ribbon below. He
shuddered and drew back.

Someone started hammering on the
other side of the door. They were shout-
ing. The Hedonist couldn’t make it out.
Then one word came clear. The word
was: Murder.

The Hedonist turned back to the win-
dow and cleared it and the narrow sill
of the sharp fragments. He slipped off
his other shoe, tied the two together, and
hung them around his neck. There were
two large flat disks on his chest and two
more on his back. The Hedonist dug a
finger under them and pried them loose.
They left red circles on his body.

He put the shirt back on and, holding
the geckopads in his hand, stepped up
onto the sill. He fitted the pads on his
hands and feet, making sure that they
fit securely and there was no dirt or
glass among the fine, rubbery cilia that
made a deep-piled velvet on the under-
side.

He slipped his right hand and foot
around the edge of the window and
pressed them firmly against the smooth
outside wall of the building. He sup-
ported himself by his left foot and
reached out with his left hand. When it
was stuck, he hung by the three pads
and brought out his left foot, feeling in
his back the sudden, cold weakness that
was recognition of the long emptiness
beneath.

He slapped his left foot against the
chilly magnesium surface and huqg
there for a moment like a misshapen
lizard. In a moment he had controlled
his adrenals. He stopped shivering.

He released his right-hand pad with
an upward roll and moved it — up. His
left h^nd followed it and then his feet,
one after the other. It was forty-six
stories and over five hundred feet to
the top; he hunched toward it like an
inchworm against the utterly smooth,
vertical, building face, broken only by
the occasional shallow window wells.

NAME YOUR PLEASURE 35

In spite of the greater distance, in
spite of the greater effort, he went up.
They would be looking for him below,
but they wouldn’t find his body there.
Before he could reach the pavement,
they would be waiting with their men
and restraints and surgical knives and
wires. His only chance was to climb

A FTER a climb of five stories, sixty
feet, he stopped to rest. He glanced
over his shoulder and saw the lights
below. They milled in the remote dark-
ness like fireflies churning in a fantastic
dance. Occasionally one slanted up the
building face, but it never rose any
higher than the broken window on the
twenty-ninth floor.

At the thirty-fourth floor, the Hedon-
ist had forty-one. stories to climb. Less
than five hundred feet. His muscles
ached and trembled from the short climb
he had made and the continual down-
ward pull of his body as it was sup-
ported from the pads at an unnatural
angle.

He wished he were thirty years
younger. In spite of geriatrics, the years
told on a body when a man asked too
much of it.

The Hedonist sighed and slowly, pain-
fully inched his way upward again.
They would think of helis soon enough.
The first one sped by him as he reached
the fortieth floor. It rocketed through
the dark, narrow canyon on its tail
jets. Its exhaust was only a few yards
away, and one of the idling rotors almost
brushed him. He turned his head to
watch.

Perilously, the heli stood on its side
at the corner and zoomed out of sight.
The Hedonist hung from the side of the
building and waited for the thunder of
the crash. It never came. He would have
to change his plans. The helis had found
him.

It would soon be back. Before then
he would have to be off the exposed wall
where he was like a fly waiting to be
swatted. He sidled toward a window.

When he was beside the shallow well,

he loosened his right hand from its pad
and undraped his shoes from his neck.
There was no chance of untying them;
he didn’t dare let loose with the other
hand.* One shoe dangled as he beat
against the window with the other.

The taps were feeble and ineffectual.
The extra shoe bothered him, and from
his suspended position, he couldn’t get
any force behind the blow.

A muffled roar came up behind him.
He turned his head and looked back.

Fifteen feet away a heli hung from
its rotors. It couldn’t get much closer
without battering the rotors against the
building. They whirred and roared only
a couple of feet from his head.

The Hedonist tried to see into the
darkened cab, but the strain only made
his eyes water. Then the lights came
on inside. The pilot stared out at him
with wide, frightened eyes. It was Beth.

TTOPELESSLY, they looked at each
other, separated by a gulf fifteen
feet wide. It might as well have been
fifty. The hedonic techniques were no
good here; suppression, projection, de-
valuation, and substitution were worth-
less. The only thing that could make
them happy was modification, and there
was no way to modify the jmpassable
fifteen feet that divided them or the
five hundred feet of emptiness that
stretched below or the hardness of the
street at the bottom.

Beth made impatient motions at him.
What did she want him to do?

The Hedonist couldn’t figure it out.
He looked down toward the distant
street. A large searchlight was sweep-
ing the width of the lower stories. Soon
it would work its way up here, and they
would spot him.

Longingly, he looked back at the heli.
Beth was still gesturing, frantically. He
understood her now: Come here!

Gladly, the Hedonist thought. Give
me wings, and I will fly to you.

Beth’s lips were moving. She swung
open the door and motioned down at
the frame. The Hedonist studied her

38 THRILLING WONDER STORIES

lips, incredulous. Again and again they
framed the same word: Jump!

Jump? Fifteen feet? Maybe. On the
ground. But fifteen feet over five hun-
dred is another thing entirely. As a
fraction, it expressed his chances of
reaching the heli and hanging on. Three
chances out of a hundred.

On the other hand, his chances of es-
cape were zero if he stayed where he
was. Beth was right. Three chances
were better than none. The watchdogs
wouldn’t get him.

He redraped his shoes around his
neck and walked sideways across the
smooth magnesium until the geckopads
were clinging to the clear window glass.
He wasted only a moment on a glance
down the long, bare, unattainable cor-
ridor. Break the window now, and he
would fall with the shards.

He slipped his feet out of the straps
and onto the ledge. He released his right
hand and caught the strap and got his
left hand free. Slowly, holding to the
straps, he turned himself around.

The pavement was a mile below.

The Hedonist shuddered and squeezed
his eyes shut. He opened them and
looked out toward Beth. Please! she
said with her lips. And: Hurry!

The searchlight finally jumped past
the twenty-ninth floor. As it swept by
it caught the Hedonist, silhouetting him
against the bright window and the
brighter walls, like a dark clinging
beetle.

The Hedonist blinked blindly. Gradu-
ally he made out the heli again, the
lighted cab and the dark outlines around
it. Slowly he bent his knees until his
arms were stretched full length below
the pads. He let the straps go and
crouched lower.

Now he was toppling forward. The
action was irreversible. He was com-
mitted to the jump, and the only thing
between him and the distant pavement
below was the door jamb of the heli.
He straightened his legs abruptly. He
hurtled through the air.

He rushed toward the heli, and the

heli rushed toward him. Beth had
rocked the ship to bring the cab a little
closer to the building. Closer, but not
close enough.

His agonized fingers missed the door
jamb by inches. And he was falling,
falling through the darkness, falling to-
ward the distant pavement and death.
He plunged through the thin, cold air
toward the Earth that rushed up toward
him to deliver the last, deadly blow. . . .

TTIS arms hit something, slipped down
past it. His. clawing hands caught
it, held it while his body fell and came
to a jerking, swinging stop that almost
tore the hands loose.

The Hedonist dangled above empti-
ness and looked up because he could
not look down. The heli was above him.
He was clinging to the tubular metal
landing skid. Beth’s face was framed in
the door above. Abstractedly, he watched
the play of emotions across the face —
horror changing to relief and joy and
back again to concern and terror; The
Hedonist swung on tiring arms and felt
the heli dropping with his added weight.
Beth’s face disappeared for a moment.
The heli lifted, leveled off. Beth leaned
out again. She stretched far down from
the door, but her reaching hand was
two feet short of the skid.

She’ll fall! the Hedonist thought, and
he had a strange sensation in his chest
as if his heart had turned over. He
shook his head desperately.

With a sudden burst of energy, he
pulled himself up until his arms were
over the skid. He clung there, gathering
strength. In a moment he raised a leg
'over the skid, sat upright, and caught
the edge of the door jamb.

Beth’s hand was surprisingly strong
as she caught his wrist and helped him
into the cab. He collapsed into the seat
beside her and closed his eyes. Rapidly
his breathing slowed and became regu-
lar.

“Let’s get out of here !’’ he said.

He felt the rear jets kick in and boot
the heli forward. He opened his eyes.

NAME YOUR PLEASURE 37

The dark walls of the artificial canyons
reeled past.

“I thought I told you to go home!”
he growled. Nothing in hedonics had
ever made him so happy.

TLETH’S hand, which had been reach-
ing toward his hand, jerked back.
“That’s gratitude!” she said indignant-
ly-

“Gratitude?” The Hedonist’s eyes
widened. “Where did you pick up a word
like that? And when did you learn to
expect it? Happiness is a man’s right
in this world, and if he has that, what’s
left for him to be grateful for?”

Beth was silent. Finally, distantly, she
said, “I came back because I thought
you might need me. You did, apparently.
I couldn’t go home because the watch-
dogs are after me. They found Bern’s
body.”

“So I gathered,” the Hedonist said
thoughtfully. “Watch out for the jog!”

Beth swung her eyes to the front just
in time to swerve the heli around the
building that loomed up in front of them.
The new canyon turned a thirty-degree
angle. Slowly the buildings got lower
and shabbier. They were getting farther
into the Old City.

“I lost them when we reached the
City,” Beth said scornfully. ‘‘They didn’t
dare follow me down. Which way will we
go?”

“The way you are,” he said absently.

“But we’re almost to the ruins,” she
objected.

“That’s right.”

The heli flew on in the near silence.
An eery glow grew bright on the hori-
zon, like a low aurora polaris. The
luminescence was mainly green and blue
but there were flickerings of violet and
purple.

“You weren’t as confident as you
sounded,” Beth said suddenly. “You
had those geckopads with you.”

“I’d have been a fool not to prepare
for the possibility,” the Hedonist said
casually. “If I hadn’t I would be mind-
less or insane by now.”

“Lobotomy I can understand,” Beth
said. “But what do you mean by ‘in-
sane?’ ”

“Induced delusions,” the Hedonist said
heavily. “The Council has perfected the
sensies. Now, they’re realies. The Coun-
cil is going to make Earth one hun-
dred percent happy.”

Beth shook her head slowly. “Poor,
happy Earth,” she murmured.

The Hedonist glanced at her silently.
Anything that decreased a man’s ca-
pacity for pleasure was wrong. Delu-
sion did that. It ruined a man for real-
ity.

Anything that took a man’s happi-
ness out of his own hands was wrong.
Happiness wasn’t a gift to be bestowed.
It was a grail, a purely personal goal,
which could only be described in .gen-
eral terms. A man could do that, and he
could train someone for the quest and
sometimes help him over the barriers,
but he couldn’t do it all. He couldn’t
find it for him and he couldn’t give it
to him.

The mile-wide crater swung under
them, glowing phosphorescently. Most-
ly, as it had been on the horizon, it was
blues and greens, but there were flicker-
ing patches of purple and violet, and
here and there flitting wisps of yellow
and orange. The crater was almost two
hundred feet deep; after fifty years, it
was still deadly. For three miles around
the crater, the shattered spears of build-
ings stretched mutely above rubble,
weathered a little now, its sorrow blunt-
ed.

“Take it down,” the Hedonist said.

“Here?” Beth exclaimed.

“On the other side. Hurry. There’s
no time to waste. . . .”

The heli hovered above the rubble,
lit obscenely by the luminescence be-
hind. Beth and the Hedonist stood a
few feet away.

“I thought you set it for homing,”
the Hedonist said, frowning.

“I did: I had to give us time to get
out.”

In a moment something clicked in-

38 THRILLING WONDER STORIES

side the cab. The rotors speeded up,
and the heli lifted itself into the sky.
It went up fast. When it was high
enough, the rear jets cut in. They
watched it streak off toward the rising
towers they had left.

Distantly, over the City, it exploded
and fell in a shower of sparks.

“They shot.” The Hedonist sighed.
“I thought they would. That will give
us a few hours.”

Beth had pulled out the IDisk that
hung like a locket from a chain around
her neck. It had begun to glow in gentle
sympathy with the crater behind them.
“Look !” she said.

“Don’t worry about it,” the Hedonist
said. He fished two large pills out of
his pocket. “See if you can get this
down without water.”

“What is it?

“Cysteine. An amino acid. A radiation
protective. It’ll last long enough to get
us out of here.”

She choked down one of the pills; he
swallowed the other easily. “Let’s go,”
he said.

They walked away from the crater
across the rubble. Soil had blown in, and
the rocks had weathered down. Seeds
had drifted down or been dropped by
birds. They had sprouted. Most of the
rubble was already covered by a kind,
green blanket. In fifty more years, this
part of the Old City would be gently
rolling meadows.

“How it happened I don’t under-
stand,” the Hedonist said, “but some-
where you’ve picked up a poor opin-
ion of hedonics.”

“No — no,” she protested. “You don’t
understand — ”

“This is what it saved the world
from,” he said, sweeping his hand from
the ruins back toward the glowing cra-
ter. “For the warped conations of a
twisted world, it substituted the only
real goal — happiness, and it taught man
how to find it^nd how to keep it.”

“What is a man profited,” Beth said
quietly, “if he shall gain the whole
world and lose his own soul?”

The Hedonist stared at her in aston-
ishment. “Where did you learn that?”
“I read it,” she said. “In an old book.”
“I know that. But where did you find
one? It isn’t on the proscribed list,
exactly, but it isn’t approved, either. I
haven’t seen one in twenty-five years.”
Beth shrugged carelessly. “There are
things that even the Council knows noth-
ing about.”

“So it seems,” the Hedonist said
thoughtfully. He did not ask what she
meant, but he wondered. How well do
I know her?

Side by side, not touching, they
walked in silence over the silent mounds
of the troubled past.

VIII

Fun Town

B ETH was the first to speak. As the
buildings around them slowly
changed from broken stumps to dark,
hollow shafts, she said, “What do you
intend to do?”

“Get you someplace you won’t be
picked up immediately,” he said slowly.

“Don’t worry about me,” she said im-
patiently. “I can take care of myself.”
“Don’t be foolish,” he said. “I’m
your hedonist. It’s my duty to look after
you. Do they know your name?”

“The Watchdogs? Not yet maybe. But
they will. They’re getting smarter.”
“Getting?” the Hedonist repeated puz-
zledly. “Since when?”

Her furrowed face smoothed out magi-
cally. “Since recently. But what I want
to know is what you’re going to do.
You’re the one they’re hunting. That
trick with the heli won’t fool them for
long, only until they run a proteinaly-
sis on the wreckage. Then they’ll be
after you again.”

The Hedonist lowered his head and
studied the ground. It was more than
he cared to admit, but there was no
evading her logic. “That’s true. And
there’s no place to run. I’ll have to get
the Council overruled and its policies — ”

NAME YOUR PLEASURE

"Folly!” she burst out. In the silence,
the word was loud and startling. “How
many times have you yourself pointed
out the fallacy of altruism?”

“True,” the Hedonist admitted. “But
I am a hedonist. That makes all the dif-
ference. My life is making people happy.
Would you have me turn my back on
all that now? That’s my happiness. I
could no more stand aside and see oth-
ers unhappy than I could eat while oth-
ers are hungry.”

“And how many, times,” she said
quietly, have you pointed out the fal-
lacy of special cases?”

The Hedonist was silent. The streets
had become discernible. They trudged
along them, and the silent shapes of
the past shouldered close. The Hedon-
ist’s eyes were watchful.

They passed into an area where the
buildings were sound. Among the dark,
looming warehouses, light, occasional
and feeble, was evidence of occupation.
Twice they had to dodge the sweeping
searchlights of mechanical watchmen.
They were approaching the spaceport
and its complex of warehouses, yards,
hotels, and fun houses. They stayed close
to the sheltering walls until they
emerged, suddenly, into a brightly light-
ed cross street.

There were people here, walking
briskly on business or pleasure, dressed
in shorts or slacks or dresses. Some of
them reeled and some of them wore
masks covering their whole faces and
some of them had faces like masks. No
v one looked at Beth and the Hedonist
as they joined the traffic, even though
they looked cautiously at everyone who
passed.

r PHIS was the Strip. Here three worlds
met to share their secrets and pool
their pleasures, and nothing was taboo.
Along this colorful, incandescent street
anything could be purchased, anything
could be sold.

Beth and the Hedonist stared at the
riot of brilliance and color stretching
Into the distance and forgot, for a mo-

39

ment that they were fugitives from
happiness.

In jumping, sparking letters, the
nearest of the signs said:

JOY FOR SALE!

ALL KINDS

YOU NAME IT— WE’VE GOT IT!

THREE WORLDS FUN HOUSE

Licensed, Hedonic Council

Farther down the street were the
more modest signs of hotels, restau-
rants, and shops. Towering above them
was the blood-red sign : MARS HOUSE.

“What now ?” Beth whispered.

“First, food,” the Hedonist said. “I
haven’t eaten since breakfast. Then
rest. I prescribe the same for you.”

She frowned and then sighed. “All
right,” she agreed. “You’re the hedonist.
But what are you going to do about
that? She pointed to the IDisk on the
breast of his shirt. It was glowing bril-
liantly.

The Hedonist slapped his hand over
the telltale radiation. “I didn’t think
we’d get so much.” He took his hand
away ; the disk was gone.

“You can’t walk around without one,”
she said.

He put his hand back to his shirt, and
the disk was there again. It wasn’t
glowing any more. Beth looked closer.
The disk was opaque, and the identifi-
cation on it w r as meaningless.

“Turned it over,” the Hedonist mut-
tered. “Don’t attract attention. It will
fool anything except a close inspection,
and I don’t intend to get that close.
Drop your locket inside your blouse.”

As she obeyed, he turned her toward
the door of a modest Foodomat. It was
almost deserted. There was a couple
at the back, but they were engrossed in
each other. At the side, against the
wall, a man teetered idly in a straight
chair. The Hedonist inspected him with
a casually sweeping glance. The star-
ing pupils told their story. The man
was deep in the fantasies of neo-hero-
in. He was locked up tight in his own,
private paradise.

The Hedonist took Beth’s arm again.

40 THRILLING WONDER STORIES

“Come on.” They entered the neces-
sary together. It was big enough for
three or four people at a time. “Got
your false I Disk?” he asked. She
nodded. “Coins?” She nodded again,
puzzled. “Go into the di-booth. Bring
me the tape:”

“But won’t it be reported to the local
hedonist?”

“Don’t think so,” he said. “Not in a
transient area like this. But in case it
is, your fake disk should confuse the
matter long enough to make it unim-
portant.”

While she went into the booth, the
Hedonist took care of his own necessi-
ties and was waiting for her when she
came out. She handed him the six-inch
tape. He scanned it quickly.

Height, weight, temperature, BMR,
urinalysis for sugar and the keto-ster-
oid indicators of adrenal activity, re-
fined Papanicolau cancer test — he gave
them no more than a glance. He skipped
over the section dealing with the ex-
ternal senses and the sensory network,
scanned the X-ray report and the elec-
trocardiogram, and barely noted the
E.Q. The blood cell count was what in-
terested him, the red, white, differen-
tial, and hemoglobin.

His sign was heavy with relief. He
crumpled up the tape and threw it into
the disposal. “Let’s eat.”

“Wait a minute.” She put a hand on
his arm. “So the radiation didn’t do me
any damage. What about you?”

He shook his head. “Can’t take a
chance. I haven’t got a false IDisk. But
if you’re unharmed, I can’t be in any
danger.”

She frowned but didn’t say anything.

Inside the Foodomat, they walked
quickly down the glass-fronted serving
line, slipping coins into the slots. The
Hedonist went to a table with a tray
of planked plankton steak with a high-,
vitamin chlorella sauce and a hot milk-
substitute. Beth chose a lighter meal,
chiefly low-fat chlorella patties and
Kafi. They ate quickly and in silence.
The couple at the back finished and left,

but no one came in.

Beth and the Hedonist got up, stuffed
their dishes into the disposal, and
walked through the doorway. The door
slid shut behind them.

“Where now?” Beth asked.

“You’re going to rent us a room.”

Beth’s eyes met his levelly. “One
room ?”

“Of course,” the Hedonist said, sur-
prised. “How many do you think we
need ?”

THEN they were within fifty yards
of the slideway into the magnificent
portal of Mars House, the Hedonist
drew Beth suddenly out of the stream
of traffic and into a shadowed niche.
“Pretend to be interested in me,” he
muttered. “Put your head on my shoul-
der.”

She put her slim arms around his
neck and buried her face in the base of
his throat. Her lips moved softly
against his flesh.

The Hedonist felt his pulse quicken
“Not so—” be began. “Not so — ”

“What?” she asked in a muffled voice.
Her face was cool against him.

“Never mind. The clowns are only
a few yards away.”

“Watchdogs?” she whispered.

They passed in motley, vivid and gay,
but their faces were young and sharp
and intent. In their hands were the
subduers modeled after the ancient
electric prodders. There was something
horrible in the contrast between their
unsmiling purpose and their dress.

And then they were gone ; the Hedon-
ist felt his body relax. Once more he
became conscious of Beth. “Stop that!”

Her lips stopped moving against his
skin. “What?” she whispered inno-
cently.

“That! Listen, now. We won’t take
chances. You’ll register for a single,
using your false IDisk. I’ll sneak into
the room later. The clerk will want to
know your business.” He paused and
thought swiftly. “Say that you’re vol-
unteering for the new Venus colony.

NAME YOUR PLEASURE 41

Got money for the deposit?”

She took her head. Her lips slid deli-
ciously across the base of his throat,
and her silky hair brushed against his
cheek.

“There’s a pocket inside the shirt.
Money in it. Take it.”

Her hand was cool and slow and
sensual as it fumbled the money out of
the pocket and withdrew. In spite of
the Hedonist’s efforts at suppression,
his breathing quickened. Then she was
gone, and he felt suddenly alone, sud-
denly cold and deserted.

She walked quickly, youthfully, to
the slideway and stepped onto it. She
disappeared through the rose portal
without a backward glance.

“Old fool!” he said savagely, and he
walked slowly toward the hotel.

The lobby was remarkably spacious.
It must have been at least twenty feet
square. The red resiloid floor was sprin-
kled with red sand that grated under-
foot, and the walls were the realistic
depth murals of Martian landscapes.
The lobby was lighted by a Mars-size
sun suspended invisibly from the ceil-
ing. Periodically, the Hedonist under-
stood, the sun faded out and Deimos
and Phobos raced across the dark blue
dome of the ceiling, the swift inner
moon twice a day from west to east.

Beth was standing at the desk, talk-
ing to the clerk ; as the Hedonist passed,
she slid her I Disk under its scanner.
The Hedonist fed a coin into the news-
fax dispenser. A sheet t)f paper slid
into his hand. He took it absently and
wandered over to the elevator. It was
a crude-seeming openwork model in a
rough, tubular frame; behind it the
wall curved shinily like the outer hull
of a spaceship. The Hedonist sat down
on a mocked-up luggage carrier and hid
his face behind the news sheet.

Hedonic Index at 2000: 94%. Weath-
er for tomorrow: same as yesterday,
sunny and warm after the early morn-
ing shoiver. News bulletin: the flash
noticed over the Old City at 2009 has
been identified as a meteor. . .

'T'HE Hedonist looked back at the

sheet. The rest of it was hotel ad-
vertising. One of the ads said :

Visit the Exotic MARTIAN ROOM
(in the penthouse)

Against the Outre background
of the CRATER
Taste

Strange LUXURIES and Stranger DELIGHTS

“A pleasure experience without compare”

At the bottom of the sheet was the
notation: Hedonist on duty at all hours.
Press 11 for therapy.

A breeze touched his face with a fa-
miliar fragrance. Something small and
light landed on his outstretched hand.
Beside him. the elevator climbed quiet-
ly. The Hedonist looked up. The cage
was disappearing through the blue arch
of the sky. In his hand was a crumpled
corner of paper. Behind the cover of
the news sheet, he smoothed it out.
There was a number on it: 3129. He
squeezed the paper into a ball and
slipped it into his pocket.

He waited five minutes, then took the
elevator to the thirty-second floor. He
walked down one flight, and in another
minute stood outside a door marked
3129.

The corridor was empty. He rapped
gently and the door slid open. He
stepped inside quickly and shut the door
behind him.

The room was empty.

The Hedonist searched* the room
frantically, but there was no possible
place for her to hide. There were only
eighty-one square feet to the room, and
she was on none of them.

His stomach suddenly felt cold and
empty, as if the meal he had eaten only
a little while before had suddenly been
teleported away.

“Hedonist?” she asked. There was
alarm in her voice. “Is that you?”

He jumped and then sighed with re-
lief. “Yes,” he said. She was in the
necessary. Now he could hear the muf-
fled spatter of the sprays behind the
door.

"I’ll be out in a minute,” she said.

She was. The door opened. She was
dressed in something black, lacy, and

42 THRILLING WONDER STORIES

dinging, and she was brushing the
damp ends of her hair. The Hedonist
had never seen her look so desirable.
Suddenly he wasn’t tired any more. He
felt young and alive again.

“Where did you get the clothes?” he
asked quickly.

She brushed past him; it was an up-
setting experience. She pushed the but-
ton that folded the chairs and tables
into the wall and raised the bed through
the floor. “Ordered them,” she said
carelessly. “There was money left. We
need clothes that won’t be recognized.
There’s some for you, too.”

She motioned toward the luggage
door. It slid open at his touch. In the
compartment behind were two boxes.
The Hedonist opened the top one. In-
side was a dark-blue tunic and a pair
of slacks. .He never got to look in the
other one. A thump on the floor drew
him around.

On the narrow strip of floor beside
the bed was a pillow. He looked at
Beth, startled. “What’s the reason for
that?”

“That,” she said sweetly, tossing a
blanket down beside the pillow, “is
where you’re going to sleep.”

“I don’t understand,” he said in be-
wilderment. “We’ve been sleeping to-
gether for almost a week now — ”

“But that’s over,” she said, wide-eyed
and innocent. “You said so this morn-
ing. And this is scarcely the time for
therapy. Unless it’s a question of your
happiness — ”

His happiness? Of course not. That
was absurd. “Of course not,” he said,
frowning. “Only — ”

“Only what?” she asked when he
didn’t finish.

“Nothing,” he said and settled him-
self on the hard floor.

He turned over and over in the dark-
ness, trying to find a comfortable place
for his hip and shoulder bones.

Absurd, he said to himself. Beth was
acting very strange; not like herself at
all.. He yawned, and a wave of relaxed
weariness swept out toward the ex-

tremities of his body. Definitely not
hedonic.

The bed was plenty big enough for
two ... It was soft . . . molded itself
to a tired body . . . and Beth was
softer. . .

IX

Name Your Pleasure!

T HE Hedonist woke up. He stared
into the darkness above him and
tried to figure out what had awakened
him. There was no sound, no move-
ment, no odor. And yet something —
indefinable — was different about the
room.

When he identified it, it was only a.
little thing. He couldn’t hear Beth’s
soft, even breathing.

He sprang up, grunting a little from
the pain of sore, stiffened muscles, and
switched on the lights. The bed was
empty. Beth wasn’t in the room. The
little cubicle of the necessary was
empty, too.

Beth was gone.

He slid the door open and glanced
up and down the hall. It was dark and
deserted. Slowly he let the door go
shut, walked to the bed, and sank down
on the edge.

Gone. Beth had left him. Silently,
in the middle of the night, without a
word, without — he glanced with sudden
hope around the room, but it turned to
disappointment — a note. He felt a cold,
drawn-out emptiness.

Maybe she was better off on her own.
Maybe he was dangerous to her. But
she might have said something. He
wouldn’t have tried to keep her. He
would have —

He suppressed the anguish, devalued
the importance. She was gone. The
question: what should he do now?

He glanced at his watch: 11:55. Al-
most midnight. Three hours since he
had laid down on the floor. He had
slept, he supposed, for a little more than
two of those. Now, he was still tired,
much stiffer, but there would be no

NAME YOUR PLEASURE 43

more sleep. He felt sure of that.

He shrugged, stripped off his under-
clothes, and stepped into the necessary.
Steamy jets loosened his muscles; icy
jets refreshed him. When he was dry,
he inspected the dispensers on the wall.

Ethyloid, one of them was labeled.
Three positions were available: Scotch,
Bourbon, Gin. The Hedonist shook his
head. He wanted to improve his ratio-
cinations, not dampen them. That
meant, too, no neo-heroin and no mesca-
line. He located the spigot labeled:
Coffee.

Not Kafi? he thought in surprise. He
shrugged. No doubt it was part of the
Mars House scheme of decor. He filled
a cup with the dark, steaming liquid
and sipped it. It was the most deli-
cious stuff he had ever tasted.

That is one consolation, he thought
wryly. Dupont has brewed another
batch, and it is the best the laboratories
have ever done.

He told himself to forget about Beth.
He told himself several times. Eventu-
ally the Hedonic exercises were almost
successful. Beth was pushed into a
corner of his mind and imprisoned
there where she could not scatter his
thoughts in an unwary moment.

He concentrated on the problem of
survival.

Decision: his survival depended on
the overthrow of the Council.

Question: was his survival worth
the price?

Answer: No, not alone; but it wasn’t
his life that was important; it was
Earth and hedonics.

While he had been occupied with in-
dividual therapies, the Council had
turned off the main road. They were
in full cry down the wrong trail. The
rabbit they were chasing was an illu-
sory rabbit.

The tricked hound soon loses his
eagerness for the hunt.

The Council had turned to pure
hedonism. It had gone far back, to
Aristippus and the Cyrenaic School:
the only good is the sentient pleasure

of the moment; the true art of life is
to crowd as much enjoyment as pos-
sible into every moment.

It was false, just as every extreme
must be. Happiness had to prepare for
the future, or there was no future for
happiness. Every moment is impor-
tant, not just for the happiness it con-
tains but for the happiness it leads to.

Imaginary gratification dulled the
senses and pushed every other type of
satisfaction farther out of reach, be-
coming meaningless.

The only road was the middle road.
The only hedonism was rational, the
hedonism of Epicurus, Socrates, Plato,
and Aristotle.

Eventually Earth would realize that.
Pure hedonism could not endure. But
it was important to save Earth the long
detour which might, eventually, dis-
credit hedonics itself.

But how to discredit the Council!

HTHERE was always the Congress,

he thought. The names of fifty he-
donists on a petition could call an
emergency session, and while the Con-
gress was in session every hedonist was
immune from arrest and any proceed-
ings against him.

What the Congress had done, the
Congress could undo.

The Hedonist’s only problem was to
get fifty names on a petition. It was
not a small problem : he was a hunted
man.

He couldn’t do it alone. He needed
help. He considered the hotel hedonist
only for a second. He didn’t know the
man, and he couldn’t take chances. The
first poor chance he took would be his
last. He closed his eyes and ran over
the list of the hedonists he knew. Sud-
denly he snapped his fingers and moved
to the phone.

He consulted the directory on the
panel beneath the screen and punched
a number. There was one man he could
trust : .Lari.

They had gone through the Institute
together. Ten intimate years of living

44 THRILLING WONDER STORIES

together and mutual analyses and
shared confidences had exposed a bed-
rock of character. Their chance meet-
ings at conventions and Congresses had
been infrequent, but the understanding
and affection couldn’t change.

He knew Lari better, the Hedonist
thought, than he knew himself.

The screen grayed, then defined itself
into patterns of dark and light. Lari
looked up wearily from his desk, his
face lined, his eyes large and dark. The
Hedonist stabbed a button. The screen
went dark.

“Yes?” Lari said. “Something seems
to be wrong.”

“It does indeed,” the Hedonist said in
a deep voice. “That is why I have called
you. Lari, this is — this is — ” For a
frantic, impossible moment, he groped
wildly for the name. He had not been
a name for twenty-three years ; he had
been a position, a manipulator of peo-
ple’s happiness. Then he said, “Mor-
gan. This is Morgan.”

“Morgan?” Lari’s voice was twisted
and strange.

The Hedonist frowned, wishing he
could see Lari’s face, but he couldn’t
risk his own face on the screen.
“Where are you?” Lari asked.
“Never mind,” the Hedonist said.
“That isn’t important. I need your
help.”

“Yes,” Lari said heavily. “I guess
you do.”

“You know then?”

“Yes. Go on. What can I do?”
“Meet me. I’ve got to talk to you.”
“Where?”

The Hedonist thought swiftly. “In-
terplanetary Strip. There’s a fun house
called the Three Worlds.”

“How’ll I find you?”

“I’ll find you,” the Hedonist said.
“Will you come? Now? I wouldn’t ask
you if it wasn’t — ”

“I’ll come. In half an hour.”

“Good. See you then.”

The Hedonist turned off the screen
and looked around for his clothes. They
were gone.

TTE FOUND his IDisk on the floor
beneath the disposal ; it had stopped
phosphorescing. He held it in his hand
and stared around a room that, except
for the discarded underclothes on the
floor, was as bare as he was. Then he
thought of the luggage compartment.

The door was a little ajar. Inside
there was one box. In it were the blue
tunic and slacks and sealed packages
of disposable underwear, socks, and
shoes. He slipped into them quickly.
In his preoccupation, he almost didn’t
hear the noise outside the door.

It was a scuffing sound. The Hedon-
ist stared at the door and silently flicked
the button that locked it. He scooped
up the box and his discarded under-
clothes and stuffed them down the dis-
posal. He noticed the cup, and that fol-
lowed. He noticed the IDisk in his
hand and stuck it on the tunic, back-
wards again.

Now to get out. He stopped, stricken.
There was no way out. Mars House
was newer than the Council Building.
The hotel had no windows; even if it
had, his geckopads were gone.

Someone tried the door and found it
locked. The Hedonist glanced franti-
cally around the room. He, could, he
supposed, hide in the bed, but the floor
recess would be searched.

“Open the door,” someone shouted.
“In the name of the Council. Joy!”

Watchdogs! In two silent steps, the
Hedonist was beside the luggage com-
partment. He slid back the door and
wedged himself into the box, his knees
doubled up against his chest. He felt
like a fetus. He let the door slip shut
until there was only a hairline crack
letting light and air in to him.

There was a moment to think. How
had they found him? The only answer
that came to him was: Beth!

No! He refused to believe it. Not
Beth. And yet — Beth had sneaked away
while he was asleep. But if she wanted
to turn him in, why should she have
rescued him from his precarious posi-
tion clinging to the outside of the Coun-

NAME YOUR PLEASURE 45

cil Building. Unless — she had changed
her mind and had decided to turn him
In to save herself.

No! Not Beth! And yet — she had
deceived him before.

The odor of burnt plastic drifted into
the box with hifri. Something slammed
nearby. Feet tramped into the room.
Bright motley crossed in front of the
crack. It turned, searching the room.
There was a subduer in its hand, like
a two-foot ebony club.

The brief whir of machinery told him
that the bed was being raised. The feet
clomped impatiently, in and around.
The Hedonist watched the crack in-
tently, hardly daring to breathe. Sud-
denly, very close and huge, appeared
fingers, reaching. . .

The Hedonist jerked his hand back.
The door clicked shut. The box fell out
from under him. He dropped, fast. He
clutched his hands tight against his
sides. They could be scraped off against
the wall of the chute. He fell in utter
darkness. He was afraid.

A giant palm pressed him down,
forced the breath from his body, flat-
tened him against a hard, smooth board,
tried to mash him, squash him, break
him. The darkness turned red and then
became black again. . .

'T’HE Hedonist opened his eyes. His
■*- legs were dangling into emptiness.
There was a little light filtering past
them, and he twisted himself around
so that he could look out of the box
without committing himself to leav-
ing it.

He was at the bottom of the chute.
Radiating out from the box in all di-
rections were endless rubberoid belts,
lighted only by the dim radiance of ma-
chines looming beyond. He was in the
service cellar.

Something pressed against his back,
pushing him out of the box. He grabbed
the edges and tried to hold back, but
it was futile. Unceremoniously, he was
dumped onto one of the belts. It com-
plained at his weight, but it started him

toward a distant and unknown destina-
tion.

The Hedonist slid his legs over the
edge and dropped to the floor three feet
beneath. He stood still for a moment,
studying the pattern of moving belts
and chattering machines. One of the
machines had lights flashing inside it.
They flashed in sequence, and it clucked
to itself as if it were counting.

The Hedonist looked it over quickly.
There were thirty-five bulbs, and the
one that was lighted for a moment was
nineteen from the end. He grabbed the
handle of the heavy switch on the front
of the machine and pulled it open. The
machine went dark and silent. He hoped
that it had controlled the elevator.

The service cellar was a maze. Tun-
nels and narrow passageways led here
and there with apparent aimlessness,
ending abruptly, twisting, turning. The
belts took up ~so much floor space that
the Hedonist spent most of his time
crawling under or climbing over. The
cellar wasn’t meant for men.

At last he found a stairway that
wound upward in a tight spiral. He ran
up the steps quickly. After two turns
he saw a glowing button in the curved
wall. He pressed it. The wall swung
aside. The Hedonist walked out into the
hotel lobby.

It was dark and empty. The sun had
set. Phobos was moving swiftly across
the sky toward the east.

He was beside the elevator frame-
work. Distantly, he heard a ghostly
voice. “Hel-l-l-l-p !” it said. . .
stuh-uck!”

The red sand gritted under his feet
as the Hedonist smiled and walked out
into the brilliant night.

1%/fONEY was a problem. Beth had
^ taken all the money he had. The
Hedonist solved that one by picking up
a dime on the street. He walked into
the glittering entrance arcade to the
Three Worlds Fun House and studied
the slot machines. Finally he slipped the
coin into a dexterity game.

46 THRILLING WONDER STORIES

The machine was an enclosed cylin-
der separated into ten horizontal com-
partments by transparent, bright, col-
ored disks. In the center of each disk
' was a hole diminishing in size from the
bottom to the top. At the sloped bottom
was a hollow plastic ball. Three jets of
compressed air lifted it through the
holes in the disks, and the intensity of
each jet was controlled by a key on the
front. The object of the game was to
raise the ball as high as possible before
it toppled into one of the compartments.

The first time the Hedonist got back
his dime. The second time he worked
the ball clear to the top and hit the
jackpot. He scooped the dimes into the
tunic pocket and walked to the next
machine. It was a tone analyzer.

Within the range of the machine, the
Hedonist could hear a compound tone.
It was faithfully duplicated on a screen
by a swirl of colors. As the Hedonist
analyzed the tone into its components
of frequency, intensity, wave form, and
phase, the colors separated into a pris-
matic layer arrangement.

By the third trial, the Hedonist had
corrected for the machine’s inevitable
distortion and collected the jackpot. The
whole business had taken four minutes.

It was not as difficult as it seemed.
The machines were shills for the more
expensive pleasures inside; they weren’t
set for a high return. Being public, too,
they would never be approved by the
Council if they produced too much un-
pleasure. Most significant, however, was
the Hedonist himself. Sensory analysis
and its corollary, dexterity, were his
business. He had spent years on more
difficult exercises than these.

Weighed down by more than fifty
dollars in change, the Hedonist walked
into the fun house. The clear doors
swung open in front of him. When they
swung shut behind, the lights went out.

There was a disturbing moment of
disorientation, as if he were floating
aimlessly in space. It didn’t help to
identify the cause : an interrupter auto-
matically canceling the wave-lengths of

light that should have reached him.
Laughter poured in on him from all
sides. Suddenly an apparition appeared
in front of him.

It was a satyr with stubby hooves
and shaggy legs and sharp little horns.
Its red, sensual lips were curled into
a joyful grin and its eyes were alight
with laughter and lust. It hung upside
down from the ceiling.

“Joy. sir, joy!” it cried. “Welcome
to the Three Worlds. Name your pleas-
ure. If it exists anywhere on the three
worlds, you wi'l find it here. What will
you have?”

B 'fore the Hedonist could speak, the
satyr had disappeared. In a wink, it
was back, floating horizontally.

“Joy, sir!” it shouted gleefully.
“What will it bo? Gambling?” He
swept out an arm expansively, and a
doorway opened in the darkness. The
Hedonist saw ghtter and movement and
brilliance, fantastic machines doing in-
comprehensible things. “The very lat-
est dev’ces, sir. Eight out of every ten
playors leave winner.”

“It’s surprising you can afford to re-
main open,” the Hedonist commented
wrily.

“It’s a rich man’s pleasure, sir,” the
satyr said quickly with a contagious
laugh. “What shall it be? Sensies?
We have all the latest tapes, sir. And
many that won’t be released to the pub-
lic for "months. There is no limit to
what the sensies can give you, effort-
lessly.” His voice dropped. “We can
even offer you — real pain ! Smuggled.
Very rare and expensive. Whlft will
it be?”

The satyr and the pathway snapped
out of existence. When the satyr re-
appeared, it was still horizontal, but
its head and feet had been reversed.

“Joy, sir! How can we please you?
Will it be girls?” As it spoke, doors
opened in the darkness; behind each
door was a girl, posed expectantly. “We
have all kinds: amateurs and profes-
sionals, ice-maidens and nymphs; short
ones, tall ones, thin ones, fat ones; girls

NAME YOUR PLEASURE 47

of every shape and color, of every tal-
ent and desire. Name your delight, and
she is yours!”

Helplessly, the Hedonist watched the
satyr vanish. When it flashed back into
view, it was standing on its feet. It
threw out its arms dramatically.

“Your pleasure, sir! Name it and you
shall have it. Narcotics? Of course!
All the alkaloids. Neo-heroin. Whis-
per your addiction, and we will supply
it in any form you desire. Or if you
have none, let me recommend the un-
usual sensations of the latest craze —
mescaline! It will slow time to a crawl.
It will let you be beside yourself — -le-
gally and literally. Enjoy the symptoms
of schizophrenia — that long-lost mental
thrill — ”

“A booth by the door,” the Hedonist
said quietly.

The satyr broke off in mid-declama-
tion. It looked a little foolish. “Er —
uh — your pleasure? A booth, sir?”

The Hedonist jingled the coins in his
pocket.

The satyr recovered quickly. “Of
course, sir. A booth. But here!” The
Hedonist felt something slip over his
face. “In the Three Worlds, identity is
lost. Only pleasure is recognized ! Only
joy is unmasked!”

And it vanished.

X

A Room on the Strip

T

T HE Hedonist blinked as the dark-
ness gave way to light. Half-
blindly, he followed a small spot of light
through a milling crowd of masked men
and women. The spot led him to a dark,
transparent door in a line of doors that
were lighted and opaque. The booth
was more like a good-sized room. There
were two comfortable chairs, a table,
and a pneumatic couch. Against the
wall was a row of coin-operated dis-
pensers. The usual things: drinks and
narcotics.

The Hedonist sank wearily into one

of the chairs and looked through the
door. He could see the fun house en-
trance. Anyone could see him, too.

“For light and privacy,” the table
said, “deposit one dollar for five min-
utes.”

Into a slot in the table top, the Hedon-
ist fed five dollars in change. The room
brightened. Around the edge of the
door, a row of strong lights came on.
They beamed against it. He could still
see out, but no one could see in.

He bought a cup of Kafi from the
dispenser and leaned back to sip it while
he watched the entrance. It had been
half an hour since his call to Lari.

Other people came through the door
but not Lari. One girl came in already
masked. Her mask was passion; below
it was a young, curved body in reveal-
ing red satin. She didn’t wait to have
the fun-house wares described. She
knew what she wanted and ignored the
darkness as she brushed past the sa-
tyr’s image — both of them invisible
from this side — into the room.

A heavyset man in a blue suit and a
mask of thick-veined, red-faced rage
grabbed her around the waist and tried
to draw her close. She let herself be
swung in against him while she deftly
flicked back his mask and kept on turn-
ing right out of his arrtis. She disap-
peared in the surging throng.

After five minutes, Lari had not come
in. The Hedonist watched the patrons
of the Three Worlds stream past his
door toward unknown destinations and
unknown pleasures. Some were dressed
in rich, glittering clothes, and some
were dressed in transparencies, and
once a girl in a mask of agony and noth-
ing else broke screaming through the
mob and dashed across the floor pur-
sued by a naked satyr.

Joy! the Hedonist thought. Pleasure!
Here hedonism has reached its nadir.
It can sink no lower.

It could, though. It could sink below
saturnalia to madness. It could sink
to delusion inanimately received, where
nothing was important but the senses

48 THRILLING WONDER STORIES

— the body useless (let it wither), the
mind worthless (let it rot,).

But wasn’t this implicit in hedonism
from the start? No. It wasn’t. The
pursuit of happiness need not be pas-
sive, could not be passive. And the
freedom to be happy need not be license,
could not be license, for license leads
inevitably to unpleasure.

Hedonism was right. Pleasure was
the only human good. But it had to be
balanced against the total pleasure pos-
sible. Choice was necessary, and that
demanded wisdom.

Like wisdom, happiness could not be
a gift. You can teach a man, but you
can’t make him wise. You can show
him the road to happiness, but he must
travel alone.

T ARI stood in the doorway, blinking.

His eyes were dark, troubled pools.
The Hedonist recognized him by his
build and movements, in spite of the
mask on his face. He pushed forward
out of the darkness, and the mask on
his face was fear.

The Hedonist glanced at his watch.
Since he had put in the call, almost an
hour had • elapsed. He watched Lari
work his way through the crowd. Lari
stopped the man with the mask of rage,
but the man shook him off.

No one followed Lari. No one came
through the entrance behind him. As
Lari passed, the Hedonist swung the
door open and caught his wrist.

“In here,” he said softly, pulling.

Lari started and then let himself be
tugged into the booth. As the door
swung shut behind him, he stared at
the Hedonist with terror-stricken eyes.
It took a moment for the Hedonist to
realize that the expression was in the
mask. -

But Lari kept staring. “Great sor-
row, Morgan,” he whispered, “is that
you ?”

“Yes,” the Hedonist said. “What’s
the matter?”

Lari pointed toward the ceiling.
“Look at yourself!”

The ceiling was a mirror. The Hedon-
ist looked up. Gazing down at him was
an idiot, loose-lipped and imbecilically
happy. The Hedonist shuddered and
jerked his head down. He started to lift
the mask from his face.

“Never mind,” Lari said, sinking
down into the other chair. “Leave it
on. It’s safer that way.”

Lari faced the Hedonist across the
table. “All right,” he said. “Tell me
what you want.”

Briefly the Hedonist described w r hat
had happened to him that day, the sum-
mons, Gomer Berns, the Council . . .
But when he started to describe the
Council’s new devices and its plans for
them, Lari cut him off impatiently. “I
know all that,” he said, fidgeting.

“You know and you haven’t done any-
thing?”

“What is there to do? So, you es-
caped. What do you plan to do now?
I don’t see how I can help — ”

“I don’t want you to help me,” the
Hedonist said. “I’m not important. The
important thing is to get the world back
on the right road. We’ve got to replace
the Council — ”

Lari laughed nervously, choking.
“How do you plan to do that?”

The Hedonist outlined his plan for a
petition. “Once we have an emergency
session, we can throw out the Council
and get the world back to sanity. You
and I know the proper hedonic tech-
niques; we know that this way is mad-
ness. And once the situation is pre-
sented to the Congress in the proper
light, it will defend the old standards.
Well,” he said as Lari was silent, “isn’t
it a good plan?”

“A fine plan, a beautiful plan,” Lari
said breathlessly. “It hasn’t got a
chance.”

“Why not?”

“You’re not a- hedonist any more. The
Council revoked your license, destroyed
your office and files. You’re a criminal.
You’ll be picked up any minute and put
to surgery.”

The Hedonist brushed it aside. “That

NAME YOUR PLEASURE 49

doesn’t matter. I can hide until the
Congress has acted.”

“Anyone who helps you is liable to
the same penalties,” Lari said sud-
denly. “But it doesn’t matter. That’s
right. You’ll never get an emergency
session. And even if you did, it
wouldn’t do any good. There isn’t a
hedonist in the country who would sign
your petition. The Congress is behind
the Council, wholeheartedly.”

“All?” the Hedonist said dazedly.
“All! Every one!” Lari pounded hys-
terically on the table. Suddenly, fran-
tically, he turned toward the wall and
slipped a coin into one of the dispensers.
A tiny syrette of neo-heroin dropped
into his hand.

fT’HE Hedonist’s eyes were incredu-
lous as they watched Lari push up
a sleeve, apply the syrette to a vein, and
press the button. There was a quick,
sharp, hissing sound. Lari dropped the
empty syrette to the floor and leaned
back, his eyes closed.

“Neo-heroin?” the Hedonist said.
“Yes, I’m an addict,” Lari said
calmly, his eyes still closed. “It’s noth-
ing to be ashamed of.”

“For anyone but a hedonist, no. But
how can you expect to help your de-
pendents when your senses are dulled
and your mind is depressed?”

“I’m a person, too,” Lari said vio-
lently. “I have emotions and desires
like everyone else. I need happiness,
too.”

“You haven’t been happy?”
“Happy?” Lari said softly. “I hav-
en’t been happy since I was a child.
None of us have. We were brave and
foolish, just a handful of hedonic
therapists shouldering the burden of a
world’s happiness. It was mad. It was
wonderful, but it was mad and im-
possible.”

“But we did it,” the Hedonist ex-
claimed. “We did it.”

Lari sighed. “Yes, we did it. For a
little while. Not perfectly, not com-
pletely, but we did it. And we paid for

it. We sold ourselves to a thousand
people apiece ; we were their slaves.
They brought their burdens to us, and
we took them on. There are few nights
I have had as much as five hours sleep,
and most of that was allotted to ther-
apy.”

“You don’t know , what you’re say-
ing!”

“Oh, I know. I know too well. It
was more than feeble tissue could en-
dure, the labor and the sorrow. And
when the Council offered us a chance
at happiness, do you think we could
turn it down? By then I’d already been
on neo-heroin for two years.”

The Hedonist clenched his fist. How
could he convince Lari that he was
wrong? It was so difficult because there
was truth in what Lari said. A hedon-
ist became a machine for making people
happy; after a few years he even for-
got that he had a name.

Inside the booth, the lights dimmed.
“For light and privacy,” the table said,
“deposit one dollar for five minutes.”

The Hedonist was busy dropping
coins into the table slot when the door
opened. He moved smoothly tp his feet.
Standing in the doorway was the girl
in the mask of passion and the red
gown. She stared at him as she moved
close. She lifted his mask, and he let
her do these things, not knowing why.

She let the mask fall back and threw
her arms around his neck. “It’s you!”
she sobbed.

It was Beth’s voice. The Hedonist
pulled down her mask. It was Beth’s
face. There were a glad smile on her
lips, but there were tears in her eyes.
They had a strange effect on the Hedon-
ist. They made his heart pound and his
knees weak.

“I’ve been hunting for you every-
where,” she said.

“Where did you go? Why did you
leave me?” the Hedonist asked.

“There’s no time for explanations,”
she said, drawing back and tugging at
his arm. “We’ve got to get away from
here.”

50 THRILLING WONDER STORIES

“A little while after you left, the
Watchdogs came,” he said, pulling
back. “They almost caught me.”

“You can’t think I had anything to
do with that!” she exclaimed. “I
cou'dn’t. Oh, you’ve got to trust me!”
“Why?” the Hedonist asked. “You’ve
been acting very strangely.”

“You’re the hedonist,” she reminded
him sharply. “Don’t you know?”

He shook his head in bewilderment.
Softly, she said, “I’m in love with
you. I had no intention of marrying
anyone but you. I wanted to look after
you, to make you happy. I was no ex-
ception. All the women in the ward
were in love with you, but I was the only
one with the courage to do anything
about it.”

The Hedonist was suddenly aware
that, under his mask, his jaw had
dropped down. He closed it with a
snap. “That’s fantastic!” And he
added, suddenly, “You made me sleep
on the floor.”

A smile slipped across her face. “You
may be the Hedonist,” she said, “but
*you don’t know anything about love.
Some desires should be thwarted ; it’s
like shading a flower that’s used to the
sun— it grows furiously to reach the
light.”

The Hedonist stared at her, word-
less. “It’s impossible,” he said at last.
“I’m a hedonist. I can’t marry or
love—”

“Fool!” she groaned. “How long do
you think you can hold up the sky all
by yourself? Just once, think of your-
self. That’s all over! Can’t you see?”
Out of the corner of his eye, the
Hedonist caught a flicker of movement.
The walls of the booth fell through the
floor. Behind the walls was the motley
of clowns. A dozen black subduers were
pointed toward them.

At first the Hedonist thought they
were wearing masks, all of them the
same: impassive blankness. But they
were faces. The Hedonist realized, with
a shock of recognition, that one of them
belonged to the Council secretary.

“The girl’s right,” the secretary said.
“It’s all over.”

His presence meant that it was a
trap, carefully planned, skillfully ex-
ecuted. The Hedonist looked at Beth
and the mask of passion dangling from
her neck.

Slowly, painfully, she shook her head.
“No, no!” she whispered. “You can’t
believe that. You mustn’t — ”

“I don’t,” he said suddenly. He turned
to the secretary. “What are you going
to do?”

“We’re taking you in for treatment,"
the secretary said unemotionally. “Both
of you.”

Both of you. Beth and himself. Not
Lari.

The Hendonist looked at Lari.
Through the mask of fear, he could see
his old friend’s eyes. They were the
eyes of a man who was lost, forever.

“I’m sorry, Lari,” the Hedonist said
softly.

The eyes winced and closed. The
mask turned aside.

“Let’s go,” the Hedonist said to the
secretary.

For the second time that night, the
lights went out.

XI *

A Man’s Privilege

T HE Hedonist threw his fist and felt
the paralyzing shock go through it
and up his arm. But in his shoulder he
felt the solid impact of the fist against
something that yielded. The secretary
grunted and fell backward in a flurry
of falling noises. There were shouts
and groans and the clatter of feet.

But the Hedonist was too busy to lis-
ten to them, too busy even to enjoy the
pleasure of striking back against the
forces that had taken his life and his
world and pulled them down together.
He had swung on around, caught Beth,
and pulled her through the door of the
booth and into the shouting, milling
crowd outside. There was laughter at
first, as most of the patrons thought it
was a joke, and then moans and screams

NAME YOUR

and growing hysteria.

The darkness was absolute. They
hadn’t left it when they left the booth.
Someone had an interrupter focused on
the whole area.

The Hendonist held tightly to Beth’s
wrist and forced his way through the
jostling, clutching, screaming crowd. He
brought Beth close and yelled in her
ear. “Are you all right?”

He could feel her head nod and then
her lips were moving against his ear.
“I can’t fight this mob,” she shouted.-
“You go ahead. I’ll steer from behind.”

“Where?” the Hedonist asked.

“Never mind! Quick! There’s no
telling how long the darkness will last.”

The Hedonist hesitated, shrugged,
and turned. He lowered his numbed
shoulder and plunged into the squirm-
ing, clawing sea of humanity. She glided
him with strong, sure movements of her
hand. Fists bounced off his body and
face and nai's raked him, bu f h ' man-
aged to get his partially paralyzed arm
up in front of his face and forced his
way onward. .

It seemed as if the darkness had
thickened, as if the night had arms and
hands and feet to hold them back. The
pressure increased and grew until —
suddenly — it fell away before them and
there was nothing.

The Hedonist reached with his foot
and there were steps going down. He
stumbled down them, dragging Beth
behind. When they reached a level
stretch again, the noise had faded in
the distance, and they seemed to be
alone. He brought Beth up beside him.

“What is this?” he demanded. “Where
are we going? Who’s using the inter-
rupter? Who — ?”

“No time now,” she panted. “Come
on. I’ll try to tell you on the way.”

She led him through the darkness
with a sure instinct. “The answer to
most of your questions is: “The Under-
ground.”

It was a strange new word. The
Hedonist let it tumb'e ai-ound in his
mind, and everywhere it touched it

PLEASURE _ 51

summoned up an exotic image : men
tampering with hedometers; people
meeting in dark, hidden places to share
their illict passions of grief, pain, and
sorrow; saboteurs .spreading infections
of gloom. . . .

How could it have existed without
his knowledge? “And you’re a part of
it,” he said.

“Ever since I realized that what kept
us apart was hedonics. Try to under-
stand us! We aren’t troubled about the
great .mass of the people; they’re con-
tented with what they have. We’re
concerned with the few malcontents
who find happiness impossible and get
into trouble.”

She stopped. They passed through a
door he could not see, and in a moment
he felt a sudden breath of cool air
against his face.

“Then you aren’t trying to overthrow
the Council?” he asked, puzzled, as they
moved on.

“Of course not. What would be the
point? We don’t want the responsibility
for a world overpopulated with medio-
crities. Let the Council have that. All
we try to do is to rescue the few who
are worth saving.”

With one step they came out of the
darkness into the light. The Hedonist
blinked at the brightness ; the blindness
wore off quickly. They* were in a long,
narrow passage lit at infrequent in-
tervals by bulbs in ceiling pits. The
Hedonist could not see the end of it.

“Then you think hedonics is a fail-
ure?” he said.

The struggle through the mob had
torn the red gown. Beth was trying,
with only partial success, to hold it to-
gether. “No,” she said with great
seriousness — and the Hedonist' would-
have smiled at the youthful gravity if
it hadn’t been so real. “For the great
mass of the people, hedonics was a
•howling success. As a physiological and
psychological discipline, it was a great
step forward. But as a practical science,
it was impossible. How many hedonists
practiced it in those terms?”

52 THRILLING WONDER STORIES

The Hedonist looked blank.

“Very few,” Beth said soberly. “Those
few tried and of them only you and one
or two others really succeeded. The rest
compromised with the world. To be a
hedonist, a man would have to be a
god — and men aren’t divine. Not yet.
At least, not many of them.” She looked
at him with warm, dark eyes.

The Hedonist felt them melt a cold
spot deep down inside him ; it had been
there for a long time, so long that he
had forgotten all about it. “So you
rescue the malcontents. Before they
go to the surgeon?”

“All we can, and we get most of
them.”

"And then what?” the Hedonist
asked, frowning.

Beth led the way up a few short
steps. They came out into the night.
The real night with the stars over-
head. •

“We bring them here,” she said.

The Hedonist looked up from her
shadowed face. Across the broad field
was a towering, pointed shape, reach-
ing up toward space and freedom. “The
planets!” he said suddenly. “Mars and
Venus.”

“And Callisto and Ganymede,” Beth
added. “We send them out to be colon-
ists. They make good ones. They can
work out their discontent against their
enviroment instead of themselves.
That’s the best therapy for them.

TJEFORE the Hedonist could recover
■*-* his breath, a broad-shouldered
man who towered above him like the
ship across the field had stepped out of
the shadows behind them. The Hedonist
looked up at the dark, scowling, bearded
face. He had never seen more obvious
self-torment. He itched to treat the
man. Devalue, he longed to say, and
substitute.

“You got him, did you?” the man
said in a rumbling voice.

“Yes, Captain.”

“You helped us?” the Hedonist asked.
“You’re the one I should thank?”

The man nodded gloomily. “Me and
some of the boys.”

“I don’t understand how you could
take over a fun house so easily — ”

The Captain shrugged his massive
shoulders. “We own it. We own most
of the Strip. We still need things out
there” — he waved his hand toward the
sky — “that Earth can give us — men
and tools. And for that we need money.
So we give the rabbits what they really
want, and they give us what we need.”
“Didn’t the Council object?”

“Fat lot of good that would do.” He
chuckled at the idea. “They know what
we could do if we took it in our minds
to — and there’s nothing those fat rab-
bits could do to stop us. We’ve got
ships. We control the space stations.”
“They don’t do anything about your
aiding the escaped prisoners?”

“Why should they? Gets them off
their hands, don’t it? That’s all they
want. They’re happy to leave us alone.
Someday, maybe, we’ll decide to come
back and do something about the Coun-
cil. Not now. We’re too busy.”

“Come on,” Beth urged.

The Hedonist looked back the way
they had come. On the horizon were the
dark towers of the Old City, and in
front of them was the ghostly radiance
of the crater. The towers seemed like
mute fingers trying to warm themselves
before a cold, deadly fire.

“I can’t,” the Hedonist said. “I can’t
go. I can’t leave Earth like this and
go seek my own happiness.”

“But you can’t help Earth,” she
pleaded. “There’s nothing you can do.
You have to accept reality.”

The Hedonist was silent. Could he
help? Could he overthrow the Council,
all by himself? What was reality? Deep
down, he knew that he couldn’t do any-
thing. The black spires on the horizon
were not fingers but gravestones. No
one can raise the dead.

Earth is happy as it is, I suppose, he
thought. It’s overcrowded. There’s no
space left for modifying reality. Any-
how, he couldn’t change it.

NAME YOUR PLEASURE 53

“All right,” he said. “Let’s go.” They
started walking across the star-lit field.
“I suppose you need hedonists on
Venus.”

The Captain stopped short. “Wait
a minute,” he growled. “You got the
wrong idea. We don’t want mission-
aries. We’re too busy to be happy.
We’ve got a million things to do up
there. We’ve got no use for any of your
immorality.” He turned viciously to-
ward Beth. “I thought you said — ”

“He’ll be all right,” she said franti-
cally. “I tell you he’ll be a right.” She
tugged at the Hedonist’s arm.

Immorality, Captain ? No, not im-
morality. The first society in which a
man’s instinct didn’t conflict with the
demands of society upon him.

Morality wasn’t everything, of course.
It was a little like death, the end of
struggle and conflict. In that sense life
was immoral, an eternal fight against
the leveling forces, and the immoral,
criminal, lawbreaking part of human-
ity was out there on the planets and the
moons and Jupiter, some day to be lift-
ing an illicit hand toward the stars.

What was it the Captain had said?
We’re too busy to be happy. The Hedon-
ist coud see the truth of that. All his
life he had been too busy to be happy.
He had had a job to do.

Happy men don’t make good colonists.
To tame a planet, to remold a world,
takes hungry men, angry men. They
had to be discontented, and they had to
stay discontented. Otherwise, the world
turned on them and broke them.

Devaluation was no good. Suppres-
sion was no good. Substitution was no
good. You can’t devalue the need for
food. You can’t suppress the desire

for breathable air. You can’t substitute
for the necessities of shelter against the
heat and the cold and the insects and
the viruses. . .

“I suppose,” the Hedonist said, look-
ing up, “that you could use a doctor.
You need obstetricians and geriatri-
cians, I guess. You have people who
get sick, who break bones, who have
babies, who grow old. I imagine the
children need teachers. ...”

A slow, brilliant smile spread across
the Captain’s face. It reminded the
Hedonist of the sun suddenly, joyfully
breaking through the dark clouds.
“Sure, Doc,” he said. “Come on. We’ve
got a million things to do and only a
few hundred years to do them in.”

S O, THE Hedonist thought, his train-
ing would not be entirely wasted.
His medical skill would be in great de-
mand, and then there would be the
children. He would teach them the
hedonic disciplines without removing
the angers that kept them alive. Hed-
onics wasn’t finished, after all. It was
only a new, finer beginning.

He took Beth’s arm possessively, and
they started walking toward the tall
ship.

“Hedonist — ” Beth said hesitantly.
“What is your name?”

He looked down at her upturned face
and broke into a smile. .“You can call
me Morgan,” he said.

“Morgan,” she repeated the un-
familiar name. It sounded sweet on her
lips, and he felt now a freedom he had
never known.

Perhaps, he thought, there was a
great deal to be said for the privilege of
being unhappy.

Coming in the Next Issue

DARK DESTINY

A Novelet About Castaways in Space

By WILLIAM MORRISON

Illustration by EMSH

The Portable
STAR

By ISAAC ASIMOV

I F SPACE voyages are “romantic,”
Holden Brooks was certainly
carrying on the tradition when he
stepped into the cabin of his best
friend’s wife, with one straightfor-
ward objective in mind.

He did not signal. He merely opened
the door and walked in. She was wait-
ing for him as, somehow, he had

Holden made love to his friend's wife. He couldn't help it!

54

55

THE PORTABLE STAR

known she would be, wearing a loose
night garment. She held out her arms
to him and they trembled slightly. Her
dark hair fell below her shoulders, ac-
centing the pale roundness of her face.

Her name was Celestine Van Horne
and her husband sat in one corner of the
room, idly pinching his ear-lobe.

Holden paid no attention to the hus-
band’s presence. He stepped directly to
Celestine and placed his hands on her
shoulders. She swayed toward him and
they kissed violently, longingly, over
and over again.

Breathlessly then; he swept her from
the floor, cradling her in his arms. Her
eyes closed, and her hand stroked the
back of his neck gently.

Holden had turned toward the bed
when, for the first time, someone spoke.

It was scarcely an impressive speech.
Philip Van Horne was scarcely an im-
pressive man. His sandy hair was thin-
ning, his frame was slight, and his eyes
were a pale blue. He rose from his chair
and said with an air curiously com-
pounded of indignation and bewilder-
ment :

“What’s going on?”

Holden placed his soft burden on the
floor, and looked at the man who had
spoken. Holden was taller than Philip
by half a head and more massive. His
lips drew back, showing strong teeth in
a broad face. His shoulders hunched a
little. The light of battle was glowing in
him.

Celestine, having backed against the
bed, watched with a feral pleasure.

Philip looked nervous. He said, sharp-
ly, “Holden, stop it.”

Holden moved forward with little
shuffling steps. His fist shot out, catch-
ing Philip on the side of his head and
sending him to his knees. Celestine’s
laugh was high-pitched and strained.

Philip got to his feet with an effort
and stumbled toward the door. His wife
was there before him, spread-eagling
herself as a barrier. She was still laugh-
ing.

Philip looked over his shoulder in hor-

ror. “Don’t do it. Holden. Don’t!”
Holden didn’t. A puzzled look seemed
to soak into his face. His hands, which
had risen to encircle Philip’s neck, fell
limply.

Celestine, her eagerness fading,
moved away from the door, and sat
down on the bed. She lit a cigarette.

Holden said, “I’m sorry, Phil. I knew
what I was doing, but I just hid fo I — ”
“I know,” said Philip, brushing his
knees. “It’s th n y.”

“That’s right,” said Holden. “I’m
sorrv. Celestine.”

“Oh. well,” she said, shrugging.

Philip said sharply, “Put some clothes
on, Celest.”

His wife raised her eyebrows. “Now
don’t be silly, darling. I wasn’t myself.
No one was.”

Ho'den Brooks was still apologizing.
“They just push buttons and have fun.
You understand how it was. Phil? There
was no way I could stop — ”

“Oh, shut up,” Philip said, “and go
away.” _

The door signal flashed.

“That’s Grace.” said Holden. His eyes
went quickly from husband to wife.
“Listen, there’s no use saying — ”

Philip said. “She knows what the
situation is.”

Grace Brooks edged in. She was a
little thing with a triangular delicately-
boned face that ended in a pointed,
dimple-centered chin.

She said in a low voice, “I was get-
ting afraid to be alone.”

Holden took her hand. “All right,
Grace. Let’s try for some sleep.”

When the Van Hornes were alone,
Ce’estine stubbed out her cigarette and
placed it in the small vent that puffed it
out into the poisonous atmosphere of the
alien planet on which they were
stranded.

They stared distrustfully at one an-
other. There was nothing to do, nothing
to say. They were slaves ; both of them ;
all four of them.

Slaves more thoroughly than any
Earthly understanding of the word. . . .

56 THRILLING WONDER STORIES

I T HAD been exciting when it was first
suggested. Holden Brooks and Philip
Van Horne worked in adjacent offices in
the Administrative Service of the Hous-
ing Unit in which they lived. Both had
accumulated half-year sabbaticals, and
some months earlier Holden had bought
a space flivver none the worse for being
second-hand. Why not, then, a shared-
expense space tour?

“There’s no point in having a space-
flivver,” Celestine said, when the four of
them talked it over, “if you don’t use it.
Air and. water last just about indefinite-
ly with a good recirculating system,
which the ship has, and power is no
problem. So that just leaves food to
think about. And we can renew stocks
almost anywhere.”

Grace said, “I don’t think I could
drink recirculated water.”

“Nonsense, darling. Pure \^ter is
pure water, even if it comes from per-
spiration or sewage. You’re just being
medieval if you worry about that.”

It worked out well. The controls of
the space-ship were simple enough, and
In a week Philip could handle the ship
as well as Holden could. The Spacio-
navtic Handbook, with its details on
all inhabited planets, stood always ready
to direct them to this or that interesting
one.

In fact, the entire vacation might eas-
ily have been a complete success had not
the ion-beam alignment in one of their
micro-piles lost focus, first fitfully, and
then permanently.

' Holden Brooks put his fingers through
his brown hair in dismay and said,
“Well, we just can’t "make any Jumps
through hyperspace, that’s all.”

“Wasn’t the ship overhauled before
we left?” Celestine demanded, sharply.

Philip bit his lip. “You can’t predict
these tilings, damn it.”

“Then what do we do ?” Grace wanted
to know, her thin voice tremulous.

“Pull in for repairs, I guess,” Holden
said, dubiously.

And because their Jumps, after all,
were amateurish ones, it turned out that

there was no inhabited planet within
half-a-light-day distance. None, that is,
that the ship could reach in reasonable
time by traveling through normal space.

Holden checked the handbook twice,
then Philip checked it.

There was only one star in the neigh-
borhood and there was only one planet
in its family where the gravity was not
impossibly high, and the temperature
not impossibly extreme. The handbook
called it Sigmaringen IV, and placed a
dagger mark next to it which meant,
conventionally, that it was uninhabited
and uninhabitable.

Grace looked troubled. “It sounds hor-
rible. Can’t we. fix the beam in space?”
Philip said, “Focusing a beam in the
absence of a gravitational field is for an
expert, not for us,” and they headed for
Sigmaringen IV. Their ship dropped to
. the planet’s surface on the noiseless,
flameless, gravity-shield of the field-
vortices produced by the two micro-
piles that were still in working order.

/"HAT made Sigmaringen IV sound
horrible to Grace was the Hand-
book’s information on the planet’s chem-
ical makeup. The thick atmosphere con-
sisted exclusively of nitrogen and argon
in a proportion of three to one, with
small quantities of the other inert gases.
There was no water on the planet, no
trace of free oxygen or of carbon dioxide
in the atmosphere, not more than a
'trace of carbon in the soil. The soil con-
sisted almost entirely of aluminum and
iron silicates with a heavy overload of
free silica which, whirled aloft by per-
petual winds formed an apparently per-
manent “cloud layer.”

“Just like Venus,” muttered Phil.
“Old home week.” His thin, solemn face
twisted into a half-smile.

It was “day” when they landed, but
the only light was the dull gray that
filtered diffusely through the dust
clouds.

Grace shuddered and said, “We should
have ultra-waved for help.”

Holden’s troubled eyes looked down

THE PORTABLE STAR 57

upon his wife out of a perplexed face. “I
thought of that, too, but it would cost an
awful lot. Isn’t that right, Phil?” •

“A year’s salary for each of us,”
Philip said incisively. “They don’t send
repair ships through hyperspace for
half-credit pieces.”

The first day on Sigmaringen IV was
passed in adjusting the beam-focus. On
the whole, it was a creditable job, and
by the time the planet’s rotation
brought them and their ship into the
night-shadowed half, it seemed obvious
to both men that the ship would survive
one Jump at least, probably half-a-
dozen.

Holden stood up, put down his ergo-
meter, and said, “It’s night. Might as
well leave the take-off for morning.”
Philip yawned. “Why not? Better
“check with the girls, though.”

For a wonder, the girls raised no ob-
jection. Grace frowned a little, but con-
fined herself to a murmured, “If you say
so.”

The first night on Sigmaringen IV, in
retrospect, was uneventful. Over the
morning coffee, Celestine bubbled ex-
citedly about her odd dream. Holden,
with initial creaking, began to recount
one of his own.

Finally Grace, with a marked redden-
ing about the cheek-bones, said, “I won’t
tell you my dream. Let’s get away from
this horrible place.”

Celestine laughed. “Darling, that
sounds terribly sexy. You must tell us.
Were we in it?”

Grace said, “We’re being watched.
I’m sure of it.”

“Oh, come,” said Celestine. “There’s
no carbon on this wretched world and
even I know that means there can be
nothing living on the planet.”

Phil said, “Actually, we have nothing
to keep us here. We can go.”

Holden mopped his lips and got up.
“I’ll take first shift.”

In five minutes he was back. He said,
“Funny things! I can’t get the ship
started!” He stared at them out of
bovine eyes.

“What do you mean?” Celestine de-
manded. “The beam is focused, isn’t it?”
“Nothing’s wrong with the controls as
far as I know. I just can’t get close to
them. When I try, I get — .” He waited
a long time and then, as though he had
failed to think of another word, he
mumbled, “Scared !”

“Scared?” In various tones, all three
said that.

Holden, visibly suffering, said in a
choked voice, “You try it, Phil.”

Philip got silently to his, feet, walked
out.

In less than five minutes, he also was
back. “Scared stiff,” he whispered.
“Couldn’t touch a thing.”

“Are you two mad ?” demanded Celes-
tine.

Philip ignored her. He turned to
Grace, “What was your dream?”

Grace’s small face was white and
against it the makeup stood out harshly.
She said, “I dreamed we were sur-
rounded by children and they were
curious about us. I dreamed they were
watching us and wouldn’t let us go. It
was very real and I — I still feel it.”
Philip said, “I felt it, too.” He looked
troubled.

Celestine said, “Darling, this is too
ridiculous. Grace is open to suggestion.
She’s a sweet girl, but she’s sensitive,
and this is a gloomy world. That’s alt.
Now let’s leave.”

Philip said, “How?”

C ELESTINE looked at her husband
with something approaching con-
tempt and said, “If I knew how to handle
the controls — ”

“You’d be just as badly off.” said
Philip.

Grace said quietly, “They’re watching
us right now.”

Philip looked at her thoughtfully,
raised his eyebrows, and leaned back in
his chair to flick the polarity knob that
controlled the transparency of the ports.

“I doubt there’s anything to see,” he
said.

He was quite wrong.

58 THRILLING WONDER STORIES

At a distance of a hundred yards from
the ship and spaced some five to ten
yards apart, a series of mounds could be
dimly, but definitely, made out through
the sandy murk. Five could be seen.
Philip frowned and stepped hastily to
the other side of the ship. He trans-
parented the opposite port. Six mounds
there.

“Apparently,” he said, “we are sur-
rounded.”

“They’re just mounds of earth,” pro-
tested Celestine.

Holden said, “They weren’t there
when we landed.”

Grace said, “They’re not material.
They’re energy creatures. They use
earth-mounds as — as clothing. Or adorn-
ment.”

“Such nonsense,” said Celestine.

Philip said, “If those things are tele-
pathic, theif thoughts and emotions may
be leaking across. Grace is most sensi-
tive to them.”

“And I’m the least sensitive — is that
it ?” Celestine was suddenly furious. She
got to her feet, “Is this a joke of some
sort? Are all three of you up to games
to panic me?”

Grace burst into violent laughter and
Celestine turned on her with eyes glar-
ing. She shrieked, “It’s funny, is it?”

Grace shook her head but could say
nothing. She whooped and shouted and
held her sides. She grew weak from
laughter until it subsided into breath-
less sobs.

Then Philip giggled and burst into un-
restrained laughter. Holden joined him,
his baritone brays overriding all.

Celestine was in tears. “Of all the
nasty, contemptible — ” She stuttered in
her attempt to find appropriate adjec-
tives, and then before she was anywhere
close to recovering her emotional equili-
brium she, too, was swept away on a
tidal wave of shrill mirth.

Grace cried, “Stop it! Stop it!”

Slowly, and in the order in which they
had begun, they stopped. Celestine was
last, flushed, a handkerchief over her
mouth.

Grace said, agonized. “They’re push-
ing buttons. They! They!” Her fore-
finger jabbed toward the port. “They
can make us do anything.”

There was no argument. They all felt
it now. Even Celestine’s last argument
sounded timid and weak when she said:
“The Handbook says there’s no life
on the planet.”

“The Handbook,” said Philip, gravely,
“bases its reports on a quickie expedi-
tion, probably, that reported no oxygen,
no carbon and no water, after passing
through the atmosphere and manipulat-
ing a reflection spectrometer. Ordinarily
that means no life, but I’ll just bet that
no expedition ever thought it worth
their while actually to land on this
planet.”

Grace stared out the port and whis-
pered, “Children about an ant-hill.
Wdtching them scurry. Putting ob-
stacles in the way to see what the ants
would do. Maybe stamping on a few.”
Philip said, “No telling when they’ll
get tired, either. Holden, I think we
better start recirculating water.”

“Must we?” Grace asked faintly.
“Now don’t be ridiculous, darling,”
said Celestine with sudden sharpness.
“The wastes are electrolyzed and the
hydrogen and oxygen are compressed
and stored, then combined again into
water as pure as pure. It’s so pure we
have to add mineral tablets to it.”
Holden moved into the engine room.
A moment later, the faint hum of the
recirculator could be heard.

Philip sighed. “Well, they let us do
that.”

\ S THE ten-hour day period pro-
gressed, Holden tried three more
times, to get the ship started. Philip
tried twice. Neither succeeded.

Holden said tensely, “I say, attack. I
say, shoot a few of them down. We have
blasters.”

“They won’t let us, you fool.” In his
own discouragement, Philip was grow-
ing careless with epithets.

Holden paid no attention. He said,

THE PORTABLE STAR 59

“I’m willing to try. I’ll put on my suit,
go out there, and shoot them down. If
they don’t let me, they don’t let me, but
I’m going to try.”

Philip said, with shrill anger, “What’s
the use? If we can’t even go near the
controls, how do you expect to get near
them ?”

Celestine said sharply, “Oh, shut up,
Phil. At least Holden is showing guts.
Do you have any better suggestion?”

“No.”

Holden climbed into his space suit.
His fingers, large and clumsy in the en-
closing metallo-latex, snapped on his
helmet. He hefted a blaster and marched
in stubborn silence to the airlock.

Philip shrugged and said to Grace, “It
isn’t going to do any good, and it might
be dangerous for him. Don’t let him go,
Grace.”

“Don’t do it, Grace,” Celestine said,
quickly. “Don’t stop him. It just kills
Phil to see someone else with backbone.”

“Don’t be foolish,” Philip said. “Has
it occurred to you that we can’t afford
to lose hm? I can’t pilot this ship all
alone.”

Grace said in a monotone, “I don’t
think he’s in any danger. I just don’t
feel any danger for him.”

It was suddenly lonely, with just the
three of them watching Holden Brooks
through the port. He was a large, robotic
figure, murkily grotesque, slogging on
heavily as he leaned into the wind. Sand
spurted up from under his mesh boots'
at every step.

They could see him raise his arm,
point his blaster, and involuntarily they
held their breaths.

The featureless mounds of soil that
were their alien tormenters did not
move.

Holden fired. The subsidiary bonds
that held together the molecules of. one
of those mounds were neutralized in the
force-field emitted by the blaster. All at
once, without sound or flame, the mound
blew apart into impalpable dust. Except
for some remnants at what had been its
base, it was gone.

Holden aimed at another and another.
Then they, too, were gone.

Inside the ship, Celestine cried ex-
citedly, “Good ! Good ! He had guts and
he’s doing it. So much for caution.”

Philip was silent, his lips compressed.
Then suddenly he said, “Look!”

He pointed. Where the first mound
had stood before it disappeared as if by
magic, a new mound stood.

At each spot where the blaster had
had its effect, and which had been blank
a moment before, a mound once more
puffed up out of the ground. Holden,
looking to right and left, let his arm
drop. As he stood there staring, his
attitude of frustration and discourage-
ment were plain even through the im-
personal lines of his suit.

Slowly he turned, and slowly he
trudged back to the ship. . . .

The four space voyagers ate without
appetite, and sat helplessly about the
clutter of the meal.

After awhile Philip said, “They are
energy creatures, as Grace said. Blast-
ing the soil in which they dress them-
selves is like tearing a man’s shirt. He
can always get another one.” He paused
thoughtfully, before he said, “If we
could only attack their minds directly!"

“How?” grumbled Holden.

“There’s such a thing as psychology,”
Philip reminded.

“Yes, but what do we know about
their psychology?” demanded Celestine.

“Nothing.” Philip shrugged. “Lgrant
that. But they’re intelligent. They must
have emotions or they wouldn’t enjoy
playing with ours. They can frighten
us. Suppose we could frighten them.
They’re only children, if Grace’s intui-
tion is right.”

“The blaster didn’t frighten them,”
said Holden.

“They knew it wouldn’t kill them,”
Philip pointed out, “so there was noth-'
ing to be afraid of. They’d fear death, I
suppose, but how do you go about killing
energy beings? Now what else would
they fear? Pain? Loss of security?
Loss of loved ones ?”

60 THRILLING WONDER STORIES

“Ghosts, too,” added Celestine, dis-
agreeably. “Have you thought they
might be afraid of them?”

Philip looked at her with his eyebrows
raised in approval. “You’re right!” he
exclaimed. “The unknown! Any crea-
ture is afraid of what it doesn’t under-
stand, of something outside its experi-
ence.”

Holden said, “The ship is outside their
experience. They’re not afraid of it. I’m
sorry to say.”

“The ship is just another form of
matter,” said Philip, “and we’re just an-
other form of mind wrapped in matter.”
He looked thoughtfully out at the
mounds, just barely seen now in the
dimming light. And he said musingly,
“Now what wouldn’t they understand ?”

Grace said dreamily, “The sun, the un-
clouded sky, the stars. They’ve never
seen any of those.”

“I dare say you’re right,” said Celes-
tine. “But we can’t bring the stars down
to them, so that’s no good. Stars aren’t
portable.”

Grace rose to her feet. Her face sud-
denly looked dreamier than ever. Her
lips were parted. She moved slowly to
Holden and deposited herself on his lap
with a gesture that was almost abandon.
She lifted her face to his with a slow
smile. When she spoke her words were
slurred.

“Ta’ me t’bed, Hol’n. I feel so fun-
neeeee.” She put her cheek against his
and giggled.

Holden reddened, and said protesting-
ly, “Now, Grace — ”

Grace tossed her head back and looked
at Philip and Celestine upside down. She
said. “W’rried ’bout them, are you? J’st
a pair o’ — ”

At the accusation that followed,
Philip’s eyes opened wide, but Celestine
only said, with dry amusement, “Why,
.the little she-devil!”

Holden got to his feet in confusion,
holding his wife desperately, while she
squirmed against his body in a manner
to make her meaning and emotion un-
mistakable.

“They ’ re making her do this,” he mut-
tered. “I — I’d better take her away.

It was half an hour before he reap-
peared.

He said, “She’s herself now, but she’s
— got a headache. She’s embarrassed
about what happened, how she acted in
here. You won’t mention it to her, will
you ?”

Celestine shrugged. 1 “Nothing she
said or did shocked us.”

Holden said miserably, “How can we
stop it all? If we just sit here and let
them poke our minds here and there,
we’ll find ourselves killing each other or
doing other terrible things.”

Two hours later Holden, in gruesome
proof that he had been prophetic, had in-
vaded the Van Horne cabin to claim
Celestine, and had nearly killed Philip in
the process.

TYTOW he was gone again, and Philip
’ sat on the edge of the bed, elbows
on wide-spread knees, fingers inter-
twined loosely, his face dazed and un-
happy.

Celestine said, with abruptness,
“Well, there’s no use brooding about it.
It couldn’t be helped. Do you want a
sleeping pill?”

Philip looked up, and when he spoke
it was not exactly complimentary to her.
He wasn’t even thinking about Celes-
tine. What he said was : .

“A portable star.”

“What?” His wife stared at him.
“Something you said earlier,” he said.
“A portable star. It might work.” He
stood up. His hands balled into fists and
he moved about restlessly. “We can’t
just let things go on, can we?”

“What are you going to do ?”

Philip didn’t answer. He just tore out
of the cabin and on into .the engine
room. With feverish, inspired haste, he
dismantled the water recirculator and
removed the gas cylinders. Cautiously
he twisted the hoses together, clamped
them into position with wire from the
electrical stock supply drawer and fitted
an Elgin tube of transparent quartz

THE PORTABLE STAR 61

over the combined nozzles. Turning
again to the water recirculator he loos-
ened the pencil-thin catalyst-chamber,
squinted a moment at the spongy plati-
num-black it contained, and slipped it in
his pocket.

He moved back into the common room
and pulled his own space-suit from its
rack. The other three in the party were
waiting for him — Holden, with a hang-
dog look on his face, and his eyes sliding
away from direct contact; Grace, pale
and scrubbed-looking, as though fresh
from a sponge bath ; and Celestine,
wearing new makeup, though it showed
traces of an unsteady hand in the appli-
cation.

Celestine asked Philip, “Are you leav-
ing the ship?”

“That’s right,” he told her grimly.
“Help me with this, Holden.”

Holden lifted the cylinders onto the
back of the suit, strapped them in place
just next to the oxygen cylinder that
would supply Philip’s respiratory needs.
He passed the two hoses over Philip’s
head.

Philip shifted the catalyst-chamber
from his trousers pocket to the pocket
in his space-suit. He dipped his finger
into a glass of water and ran it around
the inner surface of the quartz jacket
he had drawn over the twinned hoses.

Celestine began, “What do we do for
water if you — ” and let her question
fade into silence.

“Take care of yourself, Philip,” Grace
said uncertainly.

“Thanks,” he said tightly. He placed
the helmet over his head.

Once outside the ship, Philip Van
Horne felt cut off from all things human.
He had polarized all ports to full opacity
before leaving the ship, and now no
spark of light invaded the solid black-
ness all about.

Slowly he moved away from the ship,
bucking the steady wind. Hearing its
whistle against his suit was the only
sensation he could recognize. Dimly he
sensed the natives, curious, waiting for
him.

He halted and cracked open the
gauges to both cylinders. When he felt
the gentle push of gas within the quartz
jacket he put his gauntleted hand over
it.

He lifted the nozzles. They could see
him, he hoped, or could sense him by
whatever method it was they used. A
sudden thought chilled him. What if
they lacked the sense of sight, or any
sense corresponding to it? Desperately
he refused to think of such a thing.
They had to be sentient!

He raised the catalyst-chamber to-
ward the open top of the quartz jacket.
For a single moment, he was furiously
certain that this would do the trick. P>ut
only for a .moment. He paused, hands
lifted halfway. Could anything work so
simply, after all ? To try, to fail, to have
to retui’n to the ship to report failure —

His hand moved, stopped again. Swift
thoughts came.

The creatures — call them that — were
emotion-controllers. Was the doubt of
his success his own? For a moment he
had been certain, and then —

Had the triumph he had felt spilled
over too openly ? Were they now cancel-
ing it out in their own way ?

Once more, half-heartedly, he made a
tentative gesture of raising the catalyst-
chamber, and instantly depression hit
him, as dark as the night that sur-
rounded him. It would not work. How
could it?

And that thought decided him. The
depression had come too quickly, too
patly. It had not come from his own
mind, but from theirs. He could fight it
now, and he did.

He fought the despair, fought his own
apparent knowledge of inevitable fail-
ure. Closing his mind to what was try-
ing to seem to be bitter certainty, he
lunged at the quartz tube with its leak-
ing gases swirling upward.

He fought the fear that followed. Cut
it grew until it became the same fear
that had kept him from taking the con-
trols of the ship. However, the ship’s
controls were complicated. There were

THRILLING WONDER STORIES

C2

fifty motions involved, each with its
fresh surcharge of fright. And here it
was necessary only to touch one object
to another.

In the dark, he could not tell by sight
how close chamber was to quartz except
for the position of his arms. But he
knew there must be only inches left. He
compressed those inches, and his fore-
head slicked with perspiration.

He fought with what remained of his
untouched mind, and momentarily he

the open end, it sparked in his hand like
a star, twinkling and shifting tirelessly.

And the aliens were gone!

Philip could now see that. Out here it
has been as black as tar before. It was
as black as tar now, except for the djm
blue star in his hand. But there was a
lightness in Philip Van Horne’s mind
that was clear enough in the informa-
tion it gave him. The touch of the aliens
had been so constant a factor for over
two full days that, with it removed, it

Isaac Asimov’s Future History

I N THE current issue of our companion magazine. Startling Stories , we're pre-
senting a “future history” by Poul Anderson. This special feature shows how
some of Anderson’s stories fit into a large and consistent pattern.

Here now — on the opposite page — is a similar future history from Isaac Asi-
mov. We call it a “page” from his notebook because the scheme was not originally
worked out as a consistent pattern and includes only about one-quarter of his
total writings. Another quarter would be included in his robot history (mentioned
in the note), and the remaining half is miscellaneous.

Asimov says of his history, “It’s not the beautiful job that Heinlein did, but was
actually made up ad hoc. My cross-references in the novels are thrown in as they
occur to me and did not come from a systematized history.

“The fact that I reach only 48,000 A.D. may be surprising — it surprised me! I
had never once thought of the actual dates of my stories and now that I come to
write them down, I find that I haven’t been so far flung as I thought. If some
reader checks my stories carefully and finds that my dating is internally incon-
sistent, I can only say I’m not surprised.”

The latest Asimov story in this framework is The Portable Star.

\ — The Editors.

felt the dim contact of metal against
quartz. Contact broke off immediately
in a perfect agony of despair, but that
one moment had sufficed. The moisture
he had introduced within the quartz was
a second catalyst, and between the ef-
fect of powdered platinum and water
traces the hydrogen and oxygen com-
bined in chemical action and burst into
flame.

Pale blue, dancing in the residuum of
dusty air that blew into the jacket from

was as though a boulder had been
heaved from his crushed body, leaving
him free to stand once more.

fie called into his radio, “Holden !
Holden! Get to those controls!”

Turning, he ran back to the ship as
fast as he could pump his encased
legs. . . .

HPHE two men were at the controls.
The two women were asleep.

At last Philip had a chance to explain

A PAGE FROM ISAAC ASIMOV’S NOTEBOOK

Year

1975

1985

2000

2020

2050

2100

5500

6500

8500

A. EXPLORATION OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM

Title

Trends

The Singing Bell
The Martian Way
Ring Around the Sun

Event

First man-carrying: flight to the moon, against social resistance.

I Settlement of the moon proceeds; mining operations set up.

I

( Mars settled. Much of humanity still rebels against settlement of
[ other planets. This is finally overcome.

Venus settled. Mail service between planets established.

Marooned Off Vesta

Heredity
Callistan Menace
Christmas on Ganymede

Passage across asteroid belt no longer a matter of exploration.
Commercial flights across the belt begin.

f The moons of Jupiter are settled. Human eyes turn towariT the
\ Intergalactic spaces. The hyperspatial drive is discovered about
15000 A.D.

B. EXPLORATION OF THE GALAXY

The Portable Star

Flights to other stars become feasible in small space cruisers.
Very little of the Galaxy explored.

. M „.. . I Organized space exploitation begins. Mankind begins spreading

Misbe forgotten Missionary \ outward.

Sucker Bait

Population has increased to the point where the inner regions of
the Galaxy are overcrowded. Government-sponsored emigration
to the outer reaches are begun. Most of the Galaxy is now mapped
I and well-known. The old political structure is now incapable
| of handling the vast numbers of worlds. Earth’s last atomic wars
render its crust largely radioactive about 10.000 A.D. and that is
the last straw. The Galaxy breaks up into numerous political
organizations.

C. GALACTIC EMPIRE

30,000 The Stars, Like Dust
(Tyrann)

I Trantor has grown until half the Galaxy is under its sway. The
Squires of Sark, with their control of kyrt-rich Fiorina, are the
last independent group seriously to contest Trantor’s hegemony.
Trantor becomes the Galactic Empire officially, about 35,000.
Earth is all but forgotten.

f The star-regions begin to agglomerate into larger groupings. The
-J empire of Tyrann grows and declines. Trantor grows less spec-
ie tacularly. but more solidly.

36.500 Pebble in the Sky
Blind Alley

47,000 Foundation
to Bride and Saddle

47.500 The Big and the Little
Dead Hand

Now You See It —

— And Now You Don’t

{ Galactic Empire is at its height. Earth completely forgotten as
origin of humanity. Slowly the Empire grows static and decadent
Hari Seldon is born about 47,000.

The Galactic Empire settles into final decay. Its last battle with
the rising Foundation dutes at 47,200. The Mule rises and falls
somewhere about 47,300. The Second Galactic Empire is es-
tablished at 48,000.

Note: A similar historical pattern can be constructed for those stories which do include
the development of positronic robots, beginning with Strange Playfellow and ending
with The Caves of Steel. There are also many stories that fit into neither pattern.

63

64 THRILLING WONDER STORIES

more in detail to Holden, who still
couldn’t seem to take it all in.

“It wasn’t just light,” Philip was say-
ing. “They knew what light was, from
the steady gray illumination of their
cloudy skies. The illumination may have
been whiter, but they recognized it for
what it was. To them, it was still just a
piece of their sky that had come down
to the surface. Flame was something
else again.

Holden shook his head, “I still don’t
see why.”

“It was blue light that flickered and
shifted, and could be carried about. That
was the main point. It was light that
could be held in the hand. It was a port-
able star, and not just featureless light
in the sky or from a ship. Remember
flame can’t exist on this world of theirs
with its atmosphere of nitrogen, argon,
and sand. In millions of years nothing
could possibly have burned on Sigmarin-
gen IV until I got the compressed hydro-
gen and oxygen from the water recir-
culator and let them burn in one an-
other. The aliens were faced with the
unknown, the incomprehensible. They

were only children, after all, and they
ran.”

Around the space-ship now was the
comforting blackness and emptiness of
space; the friendliness of the stars.

Holden sighed deeply. “Well, we’ll be
Jumping soon, and then we’ll just be a
day or two outside Earth. We can report
these energy creatures, only . . . Phil?”
“Yes.” '

“There’s no point in telling what hap-
pened to us.”

“No, I suppose not.”

“Let’s just forget it all. It was mental
control. It’s better to forget.”

Philip said, “Much better.”

His words rang hollowly in his own
ears. Mental control or not, he would
live w-ith the memory of Celestine bar-
ring him from the door while Hojden
pursued him with clutching fingers ; the
memory of Celestine laughing wildly.
Forget?

In his mind, he could hear Celestine
laughing and, quite uselessly, he put his
hands over his ears.

“What’s the matter?” said Holden.
“Nothing,” Philip said drearily.

“It shoots a stream of electron particles. They used
to eall it a flashlight . .

"J am only a woman, and

my heart weeps . .

Illustration
by EMSH

THE FEMALE

By ROBERT CM AXE

T 0 THE Prince L’a was given the
task of guarding the strangers.

I SAT in the garden of the palace in the
evening, playing long-shadow music
on the little bells, and my lord came to
me and put his hand upon my heart and
I knew that he was filled with sadness.
He said, “It is decided,” and I said, “Sit,
my lord, and tell me what is decided and

why your spirit is so heavy.”.

He said, “Quieten the bells,” and I
quietened them, and all the birds in the
garden ceased singing.

My lord sat beside me and said with-
out words, “We met in the Circle outside
the Temple of the Trees, all the elders
and all the princes, to talk of the stran-
gers who fell from the sky in the shin-
ing disk. This is how the talk went: the
elders, none excepted, were agreed that
65

66 THRILLING WONDER STORIES

the strangers must lose the joy of their
bodies without any delay. Of the princes
three spoke up, I among them, and
prayed that the strangers should live
and dwell among us as if they were our
own kind.”

I said in anger, “Ah, the elders are
cruel. Their hearts have grown small.”

“It was not easy to answer their
speech,” my lord said. “When the stran-
gers descended we went out to greet
them and they replied to our greetings
with fire and noise, and twelve of our
family fell in redness and the joy went
out of their bodies. Therefore, the elders
argued, clearly this is a sign that the
strangers are mad, like the wild beasts
in old stories, and before any further
misfortunes overtake us let us destroy
them swiftly, and the shining disk also,
so that the day of their coming may be
forgotten for ever like an evil dream.
But the three of us spoke differently,
and we said, For a thousand years we
have not destroyed any living thing, and
these strangers — ill-favored as they are
— still are like ourselves, the blind
dream of the great Creator. Therefore,
let us not molest them in any way, and
when they are ready to leave let them
leave in peace, bearing the knowledge of
our quietness so that they will not dis-
turb us again.”

I said, “That was justly spoken.”

My lord went on without words, silent
in the silence of the evening, “We argued
each against each until We were weary,
and then the strangers were brought in
so that we could listen to their thoughts
and their hearts. But their thoughts
were like a million fish swimming in a
small pool, and their hearts were wild
with fear ; and we learned nothing from
listening to them except that the shin-
ing disk can no longer fly, its wings are
crippled, and the strangers cannot re-
turn to the place from which they came.
Then they were led out again, and the
elders said, See, they cannot leave here,
and what shall be done with them since
they are mad and dangerous.

“But I believe the elders were ashamed

of wanting to destroy them, and after I
had spoken again they looked at each
other and one rose up and said, The
Prince L’a speaks fine words: therefore
let him have charge of the strangers, let
him house them and feed them and let
him prove to us that they deserve to
live in our land. And I said, Gladly.
And another elder rose up and said,
Let it be understood that one further
act of madness shall mark the end of
our tolerance. If they harm any others
of our family they shall go instantly.
And I said, This is understood. And a
third elder rose and said, The Prince
L’a shall be held to a full accounting
of all that happens while these stran-
gers are in his charge. And I said, I
shall be held to the accounting.”

When my lord had finished speaking
he put his arms around my body and
held me, and I could feel his sadness. I
kissed him and comforted him, and said,
“There is nothing to fear, oh my lord.
The strangers will live with us in peace,
and the stars will be brighter for your
kindness.” And I started the little bells
ringing, and all the birds in the garden
began to sing again. 1 said, “My lord,
what can I do to set your heart at
peace ?”

He said with words, looking with love
at me, “The strangers are now in the
palace. We shall go together and wel-
come them and make them contented to
live among us.”

' I said, “Rest, my lord, and I will go.
Rest here, my dear lord, and listen to
the long-shadow bells and close your
eyes.”

He smiled, and I smoothed the soft
hair of his mane and left him.

rPHE wife of the important politician
A said, “Jim, here comes another of
them. Oh my God, it’s a she. I swear it’s
a she. Jim, don’t let her come near
me — ”

The important politician said under
his breath, “Control yourself, Marva.
Think of the position we’re in. We can’t
afford to offend these people. Give her a

THE FEMALE 67

smile. Act friendly.”

The beautiful girl-friend of the cele-
brated gambler said, “Did you ever see a
dream walking, Mike? You should enter
her as a filly at Hialeah — ”

Mike Postellano, the celebrated gam-
bler, said, “Shut up. They probably have
this place wired for sound. You want to
ruin our chances?”

The wife of the captain of the disk
said, “Darling,” in a whisper, and held
tightly to her husband’s hand.

The captain of the disk, whose name
was David Llewelyn, looked at the
strange creature who had come into the
room. He observed the long bony head,
the huge soft laterally-set eyes, the
short delicate arms held forward from
narrow shoulders, the long mane, the
hoofed feet; and he said nothing.

T SAT among them and strove to open
my heart to them, since they were
strangers far from their own lands, but
my skin wrinkled with fear at the sight
of them and my nostrils quivered at the
odor that came from their bodies. Their
faces were small and round like fallen
fruit, and their limbs long and thin like
spiders; their eyes were squeezed to-
gether, and they had small beaks with
tiny nostrils and small mouths like
wounds that have not healed ; their
necks w'ere skinny, and the hair grew
above their heads like the leaves of a
pineapple. The sight of their deformities
frightened me, and the odor of their
bodies frightened me even more, like the
feathers of an old arrow; and it was
hard for me to sit and not to run from
their presence.

I played the gentle bells of welcome
for them and tried to listen to what their
hearts had to tell me, but it was as my
lord said: they spoke of nothing except
fear and confusion. I called my sisters
and my handmaidens, and they brought
fine grasses for them, delicate herbs
from our emerald garden, red and yellow
apples and bowls of our clearest waters ;
but the strangers cried out loudly when
these were placed before them and were

afraid to eat or drink. My sisters
brought our sweetest birds to sing and
lit the butterfly lanterns for them; but
they were still afraid, and I pitied them.

I saw that three of the strangers were
males. One was old, with swollen in-
testines from drinking too much water.
One was harsh and cruel with hard fin-
gers. One was young, and he regarded
me quietly; and this one I marked for
friendship.

I saw that three of the strangers were
females, and they wore strange gar-
ments. One was old, with swollen in-
testines from drinking too much water
and blue hair like the nest of a bluebird.
One was younger, with yellow hair and
with two pointed humps upon her chest ;
and it might have been that she dwelt
formerly in a desert, where food and
water are scarce at certain seasons. The
third was young and quiet, and shrank
from me. And I could not understand
how any of them could conceive.

After I had sat with them for some
time I left them and returned to my lord.
He perceived the shadow in my eyes, and
he held me in his arms until all the cold-
ness and the quivering went from me.
His breath was like perfume, and the
sun shone from his eyes driving my
shadows away, and I was glad.

I said to him, “My lord, three of the
strangers are females, and they wear,
strange garments, and I cannot under-
stand how they could conceive.”

And my lord said, “Hush, the great
Creator achieves his ends in many mys-
terious ways.”

'T’HE captain of the disk thought,
Funny little thing with a face like a
horse. Cute, though. F eminine.

— What do we call these characters ?
Hippographs? Hippians? Can we live
here among them in peace ? God knows.
They’re obviously intelligent, highly-
developed, civilized. But then, so are
we. Highly. Look how we escaped from
Earth.

— The ship will never fly again.
We’re stuck here. The end of the line

68 THRILLING WONDER STORIES

for six who had to be saved.

— There were two hundred ships des-
patched from our territory. Each one
carried six who had to be saved, whose
primary function was to perpetuate the
human race, its ideas and its ideals, its
deathless spirit. Who could expect
priority in these circumstances ? Poets,
scientists, philosophers? No, sir. Mr.
Big gets priority, Honest Jim Callag-
han. Musicians, engineers, doctors,
architects? No, sir, Mr. Big’s shadow is
ahead of them all, Mike Postellano, the
celebrated gambler, to whom Honest
Jim owes so much. In this way we
preserve and perpetuate the deathless
spirit of the human race, with Mrs.
Callaghan and the gorgeous blonde girl-
friend who giggles all the time.

— And when we landed, Mike Postel-
lano in his typical humanitarian way
had to mow down the first group of hip-
pians that we saw. Bang-bang-bang.
Demonstrating his superiority to these
characters. Very human. It was a
miracle that they didn’t slaughter us
after that.

— My wife. Poor kid.

— Perhaps we should have stayed on
Earth and taken our chance like the
others who stayed behind.

— It’s too late, now.

I SAID to my lord the Prince L’a, “I
have been three days, with the stran-
gers and they are still strangers to me
and I have no knowledge of their hearts.
Except the young male, whose words
are without meaning but gentle.”

My lord said, “Be patient with them.
Understanding comes with every hour.”
I said, “My lord, if I were as they are,
far from my own land, I too should be
afraid. I beg of you, speak to the elders
and ask if we may not build a house for
them so that they may be free of our
eyes and not held like prisoners, and so
that they may observe their own cus-
toms and prepare their own food pri-
vately.”

“The elders will not listen.”

“Tell them, mv lord, that we are not

barbarians who take birds from a tree
and lock them in a cage.”

My lord said, “It is useless to speak to
the elders.”

But afterwards my lord came to me
and said, “I spoke to the elders as you
requested, and they said Nay because
the strangers harmed so many of our
family when we went to greet them.”

I said, “My lord, let me speak to the
elders,” and he answered, “They will not
listen to you since you are a female.”
We talked for many minutes until he
said, “Go, go then, leave me in peace,"
and I sought out the white-maned elder
and pleaded with him. He said, “Nay,”
but I pleaded with him again, and he
said, “Go, go then, build the house, and
when the house is finished we will listen
anew to your request.”

So we called together all the princes
and others of our family to talk about
what manner of house we should build,
and they all listened to me; and in the
evening I went to the strangers to tell
them what had been agreed.

But the confusion still remained,
there was no understanding between us
dven though I marked the shape of the
house on the floor for them to see. The
old male with the swollen intestines
made noises at me like dead leaves rus-
tling in the night, and he touched my
arm and it was like the touch of a
drowned serpent. Then the young male
walked with me into the garden, and
suddenly in the cool air there was speech
between our hearts and I was filled with
joy. We conversed without words, very
gently.

I told him, “Now be glad, for the
princes and others of our family will
build you a house where you may be
private and do as you wish.”

And he smiled at me.

Then I said, “What brings you to our
land ?”

His spirit went far from me, and then
he said, “In the world from which we
came we could not live any longer. There
were great fires and great winds, and it
was the end of all joy for our people.”

THE FEMALE 69

I asked, afraid, “Why? Did a comet
approach ?”

He said, “No, it was done by the in-
habitants themselves, quarreling. This
was their last quarrel, and they flew in
shining disks and hurled pieces of the
sun at each other until nothing good was
left. The lands were covered with ashes
and bitter salts, the grasses withered
and the streams from which we drew
our water turned to acid, and the air
burned our lungs as if fire was in it.
Even the birds fell from the trees in
sickness and the fishes died.”

I said, trembling, “How could this
be?” and he was silent.

I said, faltering at his side, “Is this
true?” and he said, "It is true but it is

and he was silent.

I said, “Is there love between you and
your female, the dark-haired one?”

He answered, “Yes,” and I left him
and hid alone in the garden and wept,
pitying him.

r F'HE captain’s wife said, “Darling, I
keep thinking about the damnedest
things.” She sighed.

“Like what, for example?”

“Oh, how you were going to take me
to Mexico for a vacation, because I’d
never been there. Now I’ll never see it.”
“This is much more exciting than
Mexico.”

“I guess so — and on the Wednesday
before everything happened I saw such

“ 1 / he ever asks for a shave too , you can
start looking for another barber ”

over now. There is no cause to tremble.”

I said, “What of the six of you who
are now among us ? Is there any quarrel
between you?”

He said, “The noblest and the wisest
were chosen to fly from the desolation,
to find new worlds and make new lives.
How could there be any quarrel between
us?”

I said. “Is. there love between you ?”

a pretty dress in Saks Fifth Avenue. I
keep wishing that I’d bought it.”

“You have plenty of clothes — ”
“They’re all in the ship, darling. And
we aren’t allowed to go near the ship.”
“In a few days, when they realize
they can trust us, they’ll let us get any-
thing we need.”

“Mike Postellano says if he wants to
go nobody’s going to stoD him.”

TO THRILLING WONDER STORIES

The captain walked over to the corner
of the room where the celebrated gam-
bler and the important politician were
whispering together, and said, “Look,
Mike, the ship is out of bounds. You’d
better stay away from it.”

Mike stood up and said, “Who are you
talking to, kid ?”

The captain said, “They have guards
on that ship day and night.”

Mike said, “You think I’m scared of
those goddam horses?”

Honest Jim Callaghan said jovially,
“Now, boys. No arguments, .fellers.
We’re all in this mess together.”

The captain said, “Mr. Callaghan,
keep this goon of yours under control,
or we’ll all be. in a hell of a worse mess.”
Mike hit him in the face and said,
“Who’s a goon, kid?”

TV/TY LORD found me in the garden, in
the darkness, and said, “Why do
you weep?”

I said, “Leave me, my lord, let me re-
main here awhile.”

He stayed near me, and I was glad.
I said, “Go, my lord, leave me,” but he
stayed, and I crept close to him and was
glad of his stubbornness. He held me in
the silence of love, and the stars were
over us; and when I was comforted he
said, “Now tell me why you wept.”

I told him, and he grew still. When I
finished he said, “This is a dream you
had through eating the coarse grasses
of the forest,” and I said, “No.” He said,
“You are a female, and your mind is
filled with strange thoughts," and he
scolded me. But later, when he should
have slept, I knew that he was awake
even though he did not move. I said,
“Rest, rest, my dear lord,” and he said,
“It is the middle of the night, why are
you not asleep, female?” And I said, “I
am asleep.”

Later, he went quietly away, and I
lay in fear. Then as the dawn came, I
heard loud noises like thunder, and I ran
to the place where I knew my lord had
gone, to the shining disk; and many of
our people were hurt and some had

fallen in redness, but my lord was un-
harmed.

M IKE POSTELLANO said, “I don’t
understand how I got away. There
was a thousand of these goddam horses
round the ship. I thought they had me
for sure.”

The captain said, “I warned you. I
told you not to go. How many did you
kill this time?”

Mike said, “I didn’t kill none. I fired
in the air. I just tried to scare them.”
The captain said, “I hope to God you’re
telling the truth.”

Mike said, “I didn’t have a chance to
fire more than a couple shots. They
snatched the gun away from me.”

“You damned fool,” the captain said.
The blonde girl friend of Mike Postel-
lano said, “Blow, little man, before Mike
beats your brains out.”

Honest Jim Callaghan said, “Now,
now, boys. Let’s keep it friendly. After
all, Mike was only trying to ensure our
safety.”

“With guns,” the captain said.

“You’re yellow down to your guts,”
Mike said.

The captain’s wife called, “David,
come here. Please come here.”

Marva Callaghan said, “Jim, Jim, stop
them from fighting.”

Honest Jim said, “How can I stop
them, dear ? The boy asked for it, didn’t
he?”

Mike said, “That’ll learn you who’s
boss around this place, punk.”

TN THE morning the elders and the
*- princes met in the Circle outside
the Temple of the Trees, and my lord
was among them, and I hid behind a
cypress tree, where I could listen. The
white-maned elder spoke, and said,
“How many of our family were harmed
in the night?”

My lord answered, “Seven.”

“And of these seven, how many have
lost the joy of their bodies?”

“Three. And another is hurt serious-
ly.”

THE FEMALE 71

“Was the stranger harmed?”

My lord answered, “We were careful
to do him no harm.”

The white-maned elder said, “It is for
the Prince L’a to explain how this hap-
pened.”

And my lord said, “It is beyond my
understanding. But this I know, they
must possess some sickness. For the
strangers come from a place where they
quarreled often, and in the end there
was a great quarrel when all the in-
habitants fought among themselves,
hurling pieces of the sun at each other
until nothing was left but a desolation.
Their lands were destroyed, and they
could not breathe the air. And from
those that remained alive of the people
the noblest and the wisest were chosen
to find new worlds and make new lives.
And the six strangers in my palace are
six of these.”

The white-maned elder said, “Since
they arrived we have known no peace.”
My lord said, “The sickness must still
be in them, and their minds are dis-
turbed after all the sorrow they have
known. Their hearts are confused.”
The white-maned elder said, “Let each
prince speak, and each elder, so that we
may decide what shall be done.”

And 1 hid behind the cypress tree and
listened, and there was none who spoke
for the strangers, and when the speeches
were done my heart grew big with fear
for I knew what the white-maned elder
would decide. And I sprang from my
hiding-place and ran into the center of
the Circle, and said, “Hear me, I pray
of you.”

The white-maned elder, who knew me
well, said, “Who is this female?”

My lord said, “She is mine.”

The white-maned elder said, “In the
Council of the Circle there is no place
for females. Remove her.”

And my lord said to me, “Go.”

But I stayed and said, “Oh, learned
elders and noble princes, hear me. Let
justice be done, but justice follows truth.

I speak for none except the young male
whose heart I know, and who is kind and
gentle.” And I spoke on about the young
male and about the young female, plead-
ing for them ; and all in the Circle lis-
tened in silence until I had finished
speaking. Then the white-maned elder
said. “We have heard you. Now go and
do not return here.”

I sat in the garden in the evening, and
the bells were silent and the birds
crouched low' on the branches; and my
lord came to me and put his hand upon
my heart and said. “It is decided.”

And I was afraid to speak to him.

He said. “Be not afraid, there is no
punishment for you.”

And T said, “I fear for the strangers.,”

He said. “All the elders and all the
princes considered your words and this
is what they said: When the strangers
arrived they did harm to our people and
we thought this was a sign that they
were mad. But we did not destroy them
instantly, we permitted them to live.
Now again they have done harm to our
people, and again we have a sign of their
madness, and have they not brought
their sickness with them? For they
could not live among themselves, they
destroyed their own lands and their own
families, until they were forced to flee
and come to this place. And in time,
when they have multiplied, who knows
what they will do? They will make a
desolation of our lands also, and is this
to be permitted ?”

I said, “Oh my lord, what then was
decided ?”

He said, “You are a female, it is not
for you to know.”

I said, “My lord, my lord, what of the
gentle young male and she who is with
him?”

He said, “We must fear their seed.”

And he left me and went alone to the
house.

And I waited, and when he came
out I washed his hoofs and comforted
him, and he did not look at my tears.

Read Our Companion Magazine STARTLING STORIES — 25c Everywhere!

,„esceND 0

By MARGARET ST. CLAIR

How could Floyd love his neighbor when she kept sending him dead
cats? He hated Nina's poetry and her dead cats — until one Hallowe'en

THE dead cat was still about a foot
down. Floyd leaned on his shovel
and looked thoughtfully into the hole.
There were times, like the present mo-
ment, when he was tempted to forget
the whole thing. Nina Ashdar was an
indisputable witch — a spiteful, mali-
cious, hell-mean little witch — and he
couldn’t possibly hope to come out on
top in a feud with her.

Furthermore, she was darned good at
her witchcraft — witness the boil on his
chin and all the limp, anomalous, mal-
formed cats she had conjured up against
him. She hadn’t been a bad neighbor,
before they had started feuding. Why
not get back on decent terms with her?

A reconciliation would be simple. All

he’d have to do would be to accept one
of her poems — any one, no matter how
short, it didn’t matter — for Crescendo,
and she’d be all smiles and nods and
waves over the garden fence. Her poems
weren’t impossibly bad, actually. Many
little magazines printed things that
were weaker than hers. The gravest
objection he had to them was that they
were so derivative. But if he could bring
himself to compromise to the extent of
four lines in the next issue of Crescendo
... It would be wonderful to be done
with dead cats.

Floyd Evans frowned. After a mo-
ment he sighed and shook his head. His
sore chin jutted out aggressively. His
personal resentment he could have over-

a

J Q O o

, ***M*!

Illustration

74 THRILLING WONDER STORIES

ridden, but it was a matter of artistic
principle. In its year and a half of exist-
ence, Crescendo had come to stand for
the day after tomorrow, the advanced
avant-garde, the truly original. Nina’s
poems were derivative in a way that set
his teeth on edge. They were early
Auden imitations, written with a very
blunt and blurry pencil by somebody
with no ear and a lack of feeling for
grammar.

Take the word “strict” for example
— Nina had “strict” in every other line
of her poems, and sometimes in contexts
that showed she thought of it as a verb.
Nobody had used “strict” in a poem
since the 30’s, anyway. He couldn’t
print stuff like that.

He began to shovel dirt out of the hole
once more. The cat was good and ripe ;
Nina’s synthetic animals seemed to get
ripe harder and faster than real ones
would have. Having the carcass dumped
over the fence into her garden ought to
infuriate her. Sometimes he wondered
why she kept sending him recently de-
ceased artificial cats, when having them
returned to her via the fence several
weeks later irritated her so. But no
doubt she didn’t know how to stop the
feud without loss of dignity either.

He scooped up the disinterred carcass
on the shovel and carried it over to the
fence, trying not to inhale. Actually,
the cat was less disgusting now than it
would have been two weeks earlier. It
didn’t look so much like a cat.

He took careful aim. It was almost
dark, and he wanted the cat to land
where it would do the most good. He
gave the shovel a mighty heave.

The cat flew over the fence and came
to rest, with a noise like a bursting wa-
termelon, in the middle of a chrysanthe-
mum bed. Floyd laughed nastily. Nina
wouldn’t get much pleasure out of those
flowers.

He drew back discreetly into the shad-
ow of a yew, and waited. In about ten
seconds an upper window in Nina’s
house flew open and she stuck her head
out. She gasped ; it was a gasp that was

perfectly audible even behind the yew
tree. Then she began to swear . . .

Floyd smiled sourly. If he knew any-
thing about Nina, her swearing was,
literally, cursing, and he’d have a couple
of new boils by morning. Already the
blossom on his chin had increased its
throbbing and smarting. But it had
been worth a good deal to hear her hor-
rified gasp. He hadn’t done too badly
for himself.

All the same, he felt depressed as he
went back to the house. The days were
getting shorter ; in a month or so winter
would be here. Fainton in winter was a
lonely place for a young man with intel-
lectual interests. Thank God he had a
worth-while project like Crescendo to
keep his evenings occupied. Tonight,
after supper, he’d make a big pot of
strong tea and go over the page proofs
for the fall issue. They ought to have
been back at the printer’s a week ago.

Supper was bacon and eggs and
canned tomatoes, but when Floyd went
to the stove to scald out his teapot, he
found that the water in the tea kettle
wasn’t even warm. Puzzled, he inspected
the kettle, the fire, the water. The bot-
tom of the tea kettle was hot, so hot
that it sizzled when he touched his damp-
ened finger to it, but the water inside the
kettle was definitely cool.

He turned up the fire. The kettle got
so hot he could smell the heated metal,
but the water inside obstinately stayed
less than luke-warm.

It was impossible. Had the laws of
nature somehow been suspended? Were
all the molecules of water in his kettle
refusing— Oh. He was a dope not to
have thought of it. Nina, of course. The
ability to keep water from boiling was
one of a witch’s traditional powers.

Floyd made a disgusted noise. It
wasn’t only that he wouldn’t get any tea
—and he loved tea in the evenings, a
big, strong, hot, generous pot — but what
about his boils? How was he going to
poultice them without hot water? Damn
Nina. She knew what she was doing, all
right.

CRESCENDO 75

After a minute he got a glass of milk
from the refrigerator. It wasn’t quite
cold enough, and it tasted faintly sour,
but he drank it anyhow as he frowned
over the page proofs.

When he had finished them, he felt
somewhat better. It looked like a good
issue. The article on “The Agenbite of
Inwit in Browning’s Paracelsus,” was
well-written, and he’d not be surprised
if it attracted some favorable comment.
Browning was such a dated and tire-
some author that it was about time for
him to become fashionable again. And
the little story about sodomy was excel-
lent. Yes, a good number of the maga-
zine.

He fastened the pages together neatly
with a paper clip and laid them aside.
Now that that was out of the way. he’d
look over the manuscripts that had come
in the last week. It wasn’t too soon to
start working on Crescendo's winter
number now.

For an hour or so Floyd opened en-
velopes, pencilled comments, frowned,
whistled, raised his eyebrows, sighed.
Most of the contributions were criticism
or poetry; there were only two short
stories in the lot. About nine-thirty he
got another glass of milk from the ice-
box and opened anotlfer envelope. His
eyebrows went sharply up.

It wasn’t only that there were three
“stricts” in the first two lines, he re-
membered the poem itself. He’d gone
over it a word at a time with Nina, try-
ing to show her why it wasn’t any good.
Did she really think he was so kapok-
brained that he wouldn’t remember a
poem he’d read less than two months
ago? Had she submitted it under her
own name ?

He shook the enclosed return envelope
out. It was addressed to Mr. Richard
Frisbie, North Ascalon Ave., Sunland.
She’d had that much sense, anyhow.

Floyd snorted. He drew a pad of
Crescendo note paper toward him and
began to write. “Dear Mr. Frisbie,” he
indited, “You are either a victim of te-
lepathy on a large scale, or you are a

shameless plagiarist. This poem is
identical with one submitted to me two
months ago by a Miss Nina Ashdar. It
wasn’t any good then either. Next time
pick something better to plagiarize. I
don’t want to see any more of her work.”

That would make Nina sit up. He
signed the note, “Sincerely, Floyd
Evans,” and stuffed it and the rejected
poem in the Frisbie envelope. He’d mail
it tomorrow morning on his way to
work.

He put a pad soaked with witchhazel
on his boil before he went to bed.

T^OR the next two days Floyd was con-
*- scious of a certain apprehension. He
went about his duties at the bank dis-
tracted and sore-chinned. He didn’t know
how long it would take Nina to get the
note he had addressed to Frisbie, but he
knew that when she did there would be
trouble. He didn’t in the least regret
having sent the note. But he couldn’t
help wondering what she’d think of this
time. Tomorrow night would be Hal-
low’een.

Friday evening was crisp and clear,
with a nearly full moon in the sky. Floyd
would not have been surprised if he had
had to wade through drifts of dead syn-
thetic cats to reach his front door, but
the moonlight showed the yard flat and
placid, and there was nothing wrong
inside the house. He even managed to
get the water in his tea kettle hot
enough to have a cup of Nescafe with his
supper.

About eight o’clock four trick-or-
treaters appeared and exacted tribute.
Outside of that, the evening was com-
pletely uneventful. By the time Floyd
went to bed, about eleven, his nerves
were so on edge that it took him nearly
an hour to get to sleep.

He was wakened by a gentle rapping
at the front door. He pulled on his bath-
robe, stuck his feet in his slippers, and
went to see what it was. He didn’t feel
at all apprehensive, probably because he
was yawning so hard.

It was Nina. He looked at her with

7« THRILLING WONDER STORIES

amazement — what was she doing here?
— solicitude — she’d freeze to death like
that — and, eventually, delight. He hadn’t
realized she was so beautifully made.

“Un — wha — how — unh — ” he said.

“Darling.” Her voice was soft and
blurry and as warm as August. “Dar-
ling. Dear Floyd.”

He stared at her. “Nina, what . . .
unh . .

She put out one small hand and
touched him on the shoulder. At the
contact, impulses he rarely thought of
awoke in him. Current shot dazzlingly
through a circuit he hadn’t even known
was there. He drew a deep breath.

“Floyd,” she said.

He hesitated no longer. He took her
by the elbow and led her into the house.
In the bedroom he put his arms around
her, kicked the door shut with one foot,
and waltzed her smoothly over to the
bed. For a moment he stood kissing her.
This was the best thing that had ever
happened to him, and he knew it. He
prolonged the kiss. The room seemed
to swim in waves of musk and amber-
gris. Then he pushed her gently .back-
ward.

“Oh, boy,” he said. “Oh, boy.”

CHE left about five the next morning.
^ Floyd, who wasn’t due at the bank
until nine on Saturdays, woke about
seven, feeling wonderful. After he had
bathed, dressed, and breakfasted, he
went out in the yard and, busy as a bird
dog, went from plant to plant picking
every flower he could discover. He
made them into an enormous bouquet
for Nina. Then he trotted over to her
house with them and, wreathed with
smiles like a bridegroom, stood knock-
ing at her door.

Her window opened. A dead cat fell
with a sickening plop at his feet.

For an instant he was too surprised to
be indignant. Then fury woke in him.
He bellowed, “Why the hell did you do
that?”

Nina stuck her head out. She looked
exactly as if last night had never hap-

pened. “What else did you expect me to
do ?” she inquired sarcastically. “ ‘Next
time pick something better to plagia-
rize.’ You — you — editor!”

“But — last night — you came — I
thought you meant it. Why, you said,
‘Dear Floyd.’!”

“Last night was Hallow’een,” she said,
as if that were a complete explanation.
“The Sabbath. Naturally I came over.
Now get out of my yard.”

“But—”

Another dead cat landed at his feet.
Wrath, resentment, and nausea con-
tended in Floyd’s breast for a moment.
Wrath won. “I wouldn’t print your
poems if they were written by Yeats!”
he bellowed. “I wouldn’t print your
poems if they were written by Dylan
Thomas or Shakespeare ! You don’t know
what a poem is! You don’t know any-
thing! You can’t write!”

Nina seemed to grow pale. Then her
window slammed down. Floyd bellowed
a final insult — something to the effect
that she wouldn’t know an imagist from
a new critic — up at the unresponsive
pane. He tore his careful bouquet into
shreds and twigs and hurled the bits
onto her front porch. Then he stalked
out of the yard. .

After that, nothing new happened.
The fall issue of Crescendo came back
from the printer and ^as sent out to the
subscription list. Floyd started work
on the winter issue. The days got short-
er and colder. It got ready to snow.

The winter issue was duly printed.
There were no new submissions from
Nina, either under her own name or that
of her alter ego in Sunland. He rarely
saw Nina herself ; she seemed to be busy
doing the writing for astrology maga-
zines that constituted her livelihood. The
winter dragged slowly on, a monotonous
succession of boil^, dead cats, and under-
brewed tea. Floyd’s boils grew so notice-
■ able that the bank moved him to one of
the rear windows, where he saw nobody
except farmers who wanted crop loans.
It was all right with him. Winter had
him in its grin.

CRESCENDO 77

January drew on to its close. And
suddenly, on February second, it was
preparing to be spring.

February is the month of revolutions.
Floyd in his wire cage, fingering thelast-
est blossom on his forehead, felt a sud-
den rebelliousness. All he’d done all win-
ter long, with regard tc Nina, was to
throw an occasional not very far-gone
dead cat over her fence. It was time to
retaliate more effectively.

When he got home that night he sat
for an hour or two thinking. Once he
wondered whether, if he printed some
of her poems, Nina would undergo a
more or less permanent transformation
into the girl she’d been on Hallow’een.

Girl? She’d seemed more like a god-
dess. a wonderful but highly earthy
divinity. When he thought about it,
even now, he . . . It wouldn’t work,
though, and he knew it. Entirely too far-
fetched. Printing her was impossible
anyhow. He had his principles.

He knew what he’d do. He’d build a
cat catapult.

The cats he’d chucked over Nina’s
fence this winter hadn’t bothered her
much. The weather was too cold for the
cats to be very ripe, and anyhow she
wasn’t out in the garden this time of
year. But suppose a cat, even a com-
paratively fresh one, came flying down
her kitchen chimney and landed with a
thump on her breakfast table. Would
she be discommoded? Ho-ho! He jolly
well thought she would.

Floyd had been an enthusiastic sling-
shooter as a boy. He hadn’t much me-
chanical aptitude, but he understood
about sling shots. He got down the
Castr-to-Cole volume of the encyclopae-
dia and looked up catapults.

Um, yes. Frame, propelling gear,
trough, pedestal. He thought he could
manage it. He could introduce a few
simplifications, since he wasn’t after dis-
tance and penetrating power — it was
only about fifteen yards to Nina’s house
— and he thought pieces of twisted inner
tube would be a good substitude for
skeins of animal sinew. What about the

bowstring that held back the wooden
arms? Maybe some of the brake cable
from his old bicycle would do for it.

He got a pad of Crescendo note paper
from his desk and made a quick sketch
on it. Then he went out to the garage.

By eleven o’clock the catapult was
substantially done. Floyd would have
liked to give it an immediate trial, but
the moon hadn’t yet come up and he was
tired and cold. Better go to bed. He’d
wind the engine up the first thing in the
morning. Nina could have an unexpected
sauce to her hot cakes or whatever it
was she ate.

He was wakened after a few hours’
sleep by a gentle rapping at the front
door. He pulled on his bathrobe, stuck
his feet in his slippers, and went to see
what it was. History — though he was
yawning too hard to notice it — history
was repeating itself.

The moon had come up, and the snow
banks were reflecting its radiance with
a soft yet dazzling light. Against the
unearthly glow Nina’s body seemed to
glow with a light of its own ; she was as
naked as she had been at Hallow’een, and
far more beautiful. Floyd felt a lump of
wonderment rise in his throat as he
looked at her.

None the less, he tried to collect him-
self.

He wasn’t going to be a sucker a
second time. Hallow’een had been splen-
did, but its aftermath had left him with
a considerable bitterness. He didn’t mind
having been seduced, but he did mind
having been betrayed. “What’s the big
idea?” he managed to say.

Nina only smiled at him. She touched
his hand lightly, still smiling. “Floyd,”
she breathed, “Floyd.”

He delayed no longer. To have clung
to an obso'ete resentment, at a time
when the v. hole moon-lit world was rock-
ing and swelling with desire, would have
been insanity. He caught her in his
arms and kissed her passionately. Then
he took her by the elbow and led her,
once more, masterfully down the hall to
the bedroom.

78 THRILLING WONDER STORIES

TVTINA left a little earlier than she had

^ before. Floyd slept until after eight,
blissfully aware that he was going to be
late to work. When he did wake, he lay
on his back with his hands under his
head, thinking over the events of the
night.

Nina . . . Nina . . . what a girl she was.
He had the distinct impression that, sev-
eral times during the night, he had of-
fered her his soul on a -silver salver,
swathed in tissue paper and wrapped as
a gift. She had accepted the gift grate-
fully and had enjoyed it. Then she had
given him his soul back again, laved in
perfume, better than ever, beatified.
Who had given the gift?

He knew one thing. Whatever the
sequel to Last night might be, whatever
the future held in the way of boils, dead
cats, cold tea, he was a lucky man. A
lucky, lucky man.

He lay a little while longer, consider-
ing. Then he got up, ate, bathed, dressed
and went to the bank. He passed the
garage, where the cat catapult was. with
an unregarding smile.

His euphoria did not disappear dur-
ing the day, but it receded somewhat.
For one thing, he was really pretty tired,
and for another there was an irksome
mix-up in his department over a crop
loan that ought to have been renewed
and apparently hadn’t been. By closing
time Floyd was in a considerably soberer
mood.

He walked home slowly, with his head
bent. What was going to happen next?
Nina had come to him on Hallow’een, and
again last night. It was an interval of
three months. Would she come again
on May first? And in between would
there be more dead cats?

He was sick of it. He was sick of feud-
ing with her, sick of the boils that made
him feel loathesome to himself, sick of
trying to get back at her. He was sick of
all the things that came between him
and the task of editing Crescendo. The
magazine, when all was said and done,
was his biggest interest in life. He
wanted to be free to concentrate on it.

And the winter issue — there was no use
in trying to hide it from himself any
longer — the winter issue had been dis-
tinctly below par.

If Nina would always be the way she
had been last night . . . But did he really
want her to be? Last night had been
wonderful, a blessing, a privilege, some-
thing he’d remember with satisfaction
all his life. He’d stick to that. But he
didn’t know how long he’d be able to
keep it up.

As far as that went, what was Nina
really like ? What was the link between
the glow'ing, wonderful woman, the al-
most goddess, who’d come to him in the
moonlight, and the mean, hateful, bad-
tempered little witch w'ho afflicted him
with those damned boils? What was
Nina Ashdar really like?

Ashdar. Floyd raised his head as if
he were listening. That name — he’d
heard it — if he could only remember —
no, it was gone. Regretfully he shook his'
head. He sighed. And yet there was
something there, if he could only get it.
If he could answer that question, who is
Nina Ashdar? satisfactorily, he might
have more time for editing his maga-
zine.

Head still bowled, he turned in at his
front gate. It wasn’t too dark for him
to see his own footprints in the snow.
Off to one side, and lighter, were the
marks that Nina’s bare feet had made
wfflen she came over last night.

There was an odd pinkish tinge to the
marks. Interested and perturbed, Floyd
bent over them. He drew in his breath
sharply. In every footprint Nina had
made — coming up through the snow,
growing in the snow — w r ere tiny pale
pink flowers.

He got down on his knees. He leaned
far over. In the gathering dusk he
squinted intently. Yes, the flowers were
roses. Tiny, perfect roses. And coming
up from them — he sniffed — was a heady
rose scent, the very breath of June.

He got to his feet again, slapping
snow absently from his trousers. He
looked around himself unseeingly. It

CRESCENDO 7!

seemed to him that he had had an im-

f iortant revelation without understand-
ng exactly what the revelation was.
Nina and the roses ... He turned and
went in the house.

Without removing his overcoat, he
went to the bookcase and got out the
Anno-to-Baltic volume of the encyclopae-
dia. He looked up “Ashtoreth.” There
were several others references ; he read
them all, ending with “Ishtar.” For a
moment he stood undecided, pleating his
lower lip. Then he left the house.

TT HAD grown quite a bit darker while
he had been reading: Venus was
brilliantly visible low in the west, and
he could scarcely see Nina’s head when
she stuck it out in answer to his rapping.
“Come on down,” he told her. “I want to
talk to you.”

“Go away.”

“I want to talk to you.”

The window closed. There was several
minutes’ silence. Then Nina opened the
front door. “If it’s about last night,”
she said spitefully, “I don’t remember
anything about it. I don’t know why I
came down, anyhow. I wish you’d go
away.”

“I’m not interested in last night,”
Floyd told her. She seemed to be wear-
ing some sort of shapeless house dress.
It looked terrible. “I came over to tell
you I know what makes you act the way
you do.” He cleared his throat accusing-
ly. “You’re a goddess.”

It was quite dark, despite the brilliant
light of Venus, but he could see her
make a spiteful face and begin to twiddle
her fingers. He felt an itching, throb-
bing lump, another damned boil, start
out on his left cheek, but he persisted.
“I said, you’re a goddess.”

She stopped in mid-twiddle. “What
makes you say that?” she asked with
what seemed to be genuine curiosity.

“All sorts of things. Your name, in
the first place — Nina’s the lady of
heaven, and Ashdar is Ashtoreth.”

“It’s just a pseudonym I took to write
for the astrology books.”

“What’s your real name, then ?”

Nina was silent. Floyd pressed his
advantage. “You said you came to me
on Hallow’een because it was the
witches’ sabbath. That wasn’t the real
reason. That was just an excuse. Last
night you weren’t a witch at all. You
were more than a woman. You were a
goddess.”

She laughed unmusically. “Thanks for
the compliment. I must be pretty good.”

“Don’t try to make fun of it,” Floyd
admonished her severely. “A witch
couldn’t do the things you do. Who ever
heard of a witch making synthetic cats?
They’re more like miniature lions any-
how.”

“I — I’ve always been able to make
things.”

“That’s what I mean. Do you realize
that there are roses growing — real,
sweet-smelling roses — in the footprints
you made in the snow? You’re a god-
dess."

i “I’m not! I’m not either!” she cried
almost in panic.

“Yes, you are. Can you remember
being born?”

“Can you?”

“Don’t be flippant. You know what
I’m driving at. Can you remember be-
ing a child ?”

Nina nodded. “Yes. I had the most
wonderful toys. Men, and women, and
animals. And a beautiful big golden
ball.”

“Most children don’t have toys like
that. But can you remember your fa-
ther? Your mother? Anything like
that?” 9

Nina made a tiny noise that was al-
most a whimper. “Floyd, don’t! Please
don’t! Please stop!”

“Why not? Don’t you want to be a
goddess ?”

“Don’t send me away! Maybe you’re
right — I’m frightened. Maybe I forgot
I’m what you say, on purpose. But don’t
make me go away. It’s so lonesome up
there!”

Floyd hesitated. He licked his lips.
She did sound distressed. He had a sud-

80 THRILLING WONDER STORIES

den vision of the neglected page proofs
for the spring issue of Crescendo. They
seemed to beg silently for his blue pen-
cil. He thought of the long, quiet eve-
nings of editorial authority. They had
never seemed so good. “Go on back,” he
told her sternly. "You can’t get away
with this, Nina. If you’re a goddess,
you’ve got to be one. Go back, Nina. Go
back and be a goddess.”

She seemed to shrink away from him.
Her shapeless garments dropped from
her; he caught a wonderful glimpse of
the unearthly beauty of her body. She
gave a final tiny whimper. Then she
rose upward rapidly.

Upward, and back. For a moment she
floated above him. She seemed to call,
to beckon. She seemed to hold out her
hands to him. Then she receded rapidly
into the glow of the evening star.

She was gone. He couldn’t believe it.
The mother hubbard contraption she
had been wearing was still lying on the
porch. He picked it up and shook it. She
wasn’t anywhere.

He regarded Venus, now almost on
the horizon, blankly. That was where
she had gone. He was positive of it. It

was reasonable enough. Venus was the
planet sacred to Ishtar.

At last he sighed. Now that it was
over, he felt a poignant sense of loss. It
was not unmixed with relief — there’d be
no more boils, dead cats, straw-colored
tea. But, loss.

For the next few weeks he worked,
though with diminishing enthusiasm,
on the proofs for the spring issue of
Crescendo. He even wrote a few letters
to contributors. Then he shoved the
proofs in a drawer.

He sent off for a small reflecting tele-
scope — $29.50, observatory clearness
guaranteed — and paid for a year’s sub-
scription to a magazine for amateur
astronomers called Sky and Telescope.
Now, every evening that it is clear
enough and Venus is above the horizon,
he is out looking earnestly at the planet
through the telescope.

The first of May has passed, but Floyd
is still hopeful. There’s still August
first, and October thirty-first after that.

He hasn’t exactly forgotten Cres-
cendo. But it looks as if the spring issue
of the magazine would be a long time
in coming out.

Among Next Issue’s Stories

<

DOUBLE DATE

Here’s what happened when Smitty found himself
on a date with two girls at the same time

By WINSTON MARKS

•

WAYFARER

They called him an idiot — but the alien
voices he heard were real

Bv ROGER DEE

Illustration by ALEX SCHOMBURG

Counterfeiter

By WINSTON MARKS

They duplicated lettuce of the garden, not banknote, variety . . .

I SLAPPED the requisition down on
Oliver’s desk. “Would you mind,” I
said, “explaining?”

Oliver picked up the slip in his fat
fingers, let it drop, and folded his hands
across his belly again. “Like it says,”
he said mildly. “The big red rubber

stamp. Disapproved. Or in simpler
words, you don’t get what you want,
Buster.”

“But, cripes, man, I’m ready to dem-
onstrate. Three years’ work, and you
bounce back a lousy two hundred buck’s
worth of requisition. Dollars to dough-

82 THRILLING WONDER STORIES

nuts, they got the stuff in the stock
room right now.”

“Demonstrate, shmemonstrate. I sent
it through channels and it came back
red.”

“I’ll take it to Stockham,” I an-
nounced.

Oliver shrugged. “I think he’s wash-
ing retorts in the chem lab right now,”
he said. “Things are tough, that’s all.
I’m sorry, Blakely — I really am. I know
what it means to you. But when the di-
rector gets chopped five thousand a year
and goes around turning out lights in his
own office — well, that’s what Stockham’s
doing.”

Completely puzzled, I climbed the
marble stairs to see the old man, him-
self. Stockham waved me in and I flut-
tered th6 pink slip at him. “I think
there’s been a mistake, sir. Oliver
says — ”

“No mistake, Dr. Blakely,” Stockham
snapped. “Our budget is shot.” He
worked the loose skin of his grizzled
face with one hand and gripped the arm
of his chair with the other. “Your proj-
ect and all others in pure research are
canceled. You’ll be handed a memoran-
dum within the hour, but I’ll give you a
preview. The Clow Foundation is about
to become unhinged on the Ph.D. level.
All but a few technicians and a small
consulting staff will be terminated this
week. No more funds for — ” he almost
choked at his anger over the words —
“unproductive projects.” He swiveled
his chair away so he wouldn’t have to
meet my eye.

Which is the ungentle way I met the
depression of 1961. As I walked,
stunned, from the senior director’s of-
fice, his girl handed me a mimeod sheet,
still wet and pungent. My name was on
the separation list.

In the vaulted corridor outside, the
busts of Einstein and Langmuir fol-
lowed me with stony eyes. They had
their niches already. LaVoisier smiled
at me in the curve of the stair well, but
Archimedes and Pascal looked the other
way, and Euclid hissed, “Alchemist!”

lYTATH Ph.D.’s were indeed a glut on
the market. My telegrams to the
Ford and Carnegie Foundations were
answered promptly, politely and nega-
tively. All my ex-classmates were in the
same spot or hanging onto their appoint-
ments by the glint of their Phi Beta
keys.

A week later I wheeled my old ’54
jalopy up the rutted side-road between
the acres of rich loam that was our fam-
ily farm. I came unannounced, unnerved
and disillusioned. It was almost bed
time, and the family was on the front
porch. My brother Joe, whooped at me,
and Dad, Suellen and her sister, Toby,
hauled me out of my car before I could
turn out the lights.

Dad noticed my black mood right off
and simmered down Suellen, Joe’s chub-
by, tow-headed wife. He led me up to
the old porch swing. “Stop chattering,
and let the lad say something,” he said.
“Wonderful to have you with us again,
boy. Little vacation?”

“As we say in the theater, I’m be-
tween engagements,” I told them.

“No!” Toby exclaimed.

“That’s right. Fired. Separated. Ter-
minated. Caput!”

They looked as if I’d just handed each
one an anvil. Joe recovered first. “Swell,”
he grinned. “I got a pitchfork that’ll
just fit those delicate hands of yours.”

Sue said, “Come on, Toby. Let’s feed
the brute. Looks like he’s been on the
breadline for weeks.” Toby got off my
lap, and suddenly I realized I had been
holding a small, but mature young wom-
an. The package of short pig-tails,
freckles and tight denim pants was no
longer a teen-age dynamo. She was a
full size power-plant with a 10,000-volt
smile.

When she had gone in with Suellen,
Joe said, “Believe it or not Bill, we were
just talking about you when you "drove
up, and Toby was asking when you
might get down this way for a vacation.
Then she came right out and announced
she figured on marrying you. You know
Toby. Says what’s on her mind, and

COUNTERFEITER 83

darned if she doesn’t mean it about half
the time.”

No, I didn’t know this Toby. She was
an impish little creature who came to
live with them shortly after Joe married
Suellen. She had been away at college
when the fire levelled her parents’ ranch
buildings and trapped them on the sec-
ond floor of their old homestead.
Orphaned, she couldn’t stand the city
any more. She appeared one afternoon
with her suitcase and a face full of tears,
and Dad took her in as a “hired hand.”

She and Suellen sold their farmland,
and the proceeds were more than ample
to finish Toby’s education, but she’d
have none of it. She was soured on city
people in general and capital K culture in
particular. She called herself the out-
cast of sorority flats, and declared she’d
die an old maid in sneakers before she’d
wrestle it out in high heels with the col-
lege boys.

“I thought she was down on the intel-
ligentsia,” I said. “As I recall, I have a
degree.”

“Yeah, but you got nothing against
sneakers,” Joe laughed.

When I went in to eat the cold fried
chicken the rest of them sat around
drinking coffee and watching me.

Dad said, “Hope you can stay with us,
Bill. Toby needs a carpenter for her new
project.”

“Building us a good old-fashioned
highway market,” Toby interrupted.

“To sell our own produce?” I asked.
“What happened to the frozen food con-
tracts ?”

“Like I predicted,” Toby said, “soon
as this depression broke the market
they started a price war — with us for
ammunition. They tore up our contracts,
and Dad refuses to sell at their prices.
We’ll undersell their frozen prices by
fifty per cent and still make a profit by
operating our own stand.”

They explained to me that the big
super-markets now dominated all food
distribution, and their acres of frozen
food cabinets offered everything freez-
able. Fresh and canned goods were al-

most entirely out.

It sounded feasible to me, and I agreed
to help them.

J OE wanted to know about my work.

“Did you make any progress on your
conversion process theory?”

“The math and paper work are done,”
I told him. “That’s what hit me so hard.
I was ready to build a unit and prove out
my formulae when the axe fell.” I
pointed to where I’d dropped my brief-
case. “There it is, three years’ work,
frozen because the board of directors
panicked. I can’t publish until I verify
my math operations with an experi-
mental demonstration. So, let’s build a
vegetable stand and forget it for a
while.” »

Toby looked up from her manicuring
operation. “Is this the same deal you
talked about when you were here last
Christmas? The idea for transmuting
metals and stuff?” I nodded. She asked,
“Couldn’t you work on it here?”

“It would take quite a bit of money,”
I explained. “At the foundation where
I had their big transformers and rectify-
ing units to work with it would have
been very inexpensive, but here I’d
spend two or three thousand dollars just
on power equipment. And like I told
you, there’s nothing practical about it.
The cost of power exceeds the value of
anything you would transmute, by a fac-
tor of about a hundred to one. It’s just a
new principle, and it would bring me
some recognition if I could publish my
paper.”

“Let’s do it,” she said suddenly. “Let’s
build you a rig. I’ve got money in the
bank. We can be partners. You get the
glory, and if there’s ever any profit, we’ll
split it!”

“That’s sweet of you,” I told her, “but
better save the money for your dowry.
With those freckles, you’ll need it.” I
meant it to be friendly, but it came out
sounding condescending.

Toby flushed, and then I remembered
Joe telling me about her assertion re-
garding marrying me. I could have

8t THRILLING WONDER STORIES

kicked myself.

The stand went up in a hurry. Then
the real work began. For three weeks
we rose with the larks, picked dewey-
fresh lettuce, tomatoes and other as-
sorted vegetables as they came ready.
We cleaned, trimmed, hauled and dis-
played them like we remembered the
old-time farmer’s markets doing.

Nothing happened. Even the thrifty
had lost the habit of highway shopping.
Then we built a couple of huge signs on
which we posted a daily super-bargain,
such as :

LETTUCE, 3c A HEAD

It cost us more than that to grow it,
but we had to stop those cars somehow.

It worked. As the summer wore on,
more and more old cars stopped at the
stand. The depression was working in
our favor. But when we totalled our
profit in October it was tiny. Our loss-
leader items had sold all too well. Our
volume was fair but the take was small.

“We got most of our operating cost
out of our crop.” Dad said, not too en-
thusiastically. “Next year we’ll put in a
line of groceries and increase our gross
volume.”

It was at Sunday dinner, the day after
we closed the stand for the winter that
Toby kept looking at me out of the cor-
ners of her big, gray eyes. After dinner
I learned why. She led me out back in
the crisp fall air. She drew me into the
old chicken shed where she pulled a
string that flooded us with light. She
waved her hand in a triumphant arc.
“All right, Mr.. Brain, you need a lab.
Now you have a lab. I want to see your
gadget work. Let’s get going.”

She had scoured the little out-building,
floor to ceiling, tacked up oil-cloth cur-
tains and stuck Air-Wick bottles in the
corners. Joe had built a couple of broad
benches and wired in electrical outlets.
A small heater warmed the air, and it
had a secluded cosiness.

“You provide the gray-stuff and I’ll
kick in the green. We split the proceeds
50-50. No arguments this time.”

Her faith in me gave me a glow. It
really did. But I explained gently, “Don’t
you realize, baby-doll, there will be no
proceeds? If I wanted to bilk you I’d
have some stock shares printed. There’s
just no practical use for my gadget.”

THHE materials started arriving the

following Friday morning. Toby had
been banging ears in our household, and
the whole family presented a united
front against my" objections. Dad voiced
the decision. I was to be excused from
ail chores. They would feed and clothe
me. 1 would encage myself and bring
honor to the name of Blakely. Next
spring I could pull my weight on the
economic front by helping Toby expand
the market.

Even so, I begrudged every dime of
Toby’s that I had to spend. I redrew
my plans and ^et out to develop a min-
iature and somewhat revised version of
my converter. Being only a second-
class mechanic, it was months before my
ten thumbs were able to express my
math symbols in metal, wood, glass and
polysterene. Toby prodded me every
foot of the way. She became more ex-
pert at soldering fine connections than
I, and she even developed a talent for
glass blowing over the coffee hot-plate.

Finally, on a balmy May evening, I
called the family to the hen-house to
witness my hybrid triumph of mind over
matter. It looked like a cross between an
incubator and a permanent wave ma-
chine, and much, much more useful than
it was designed to be. My rooters sat
about on folding camp-stools as I turned
on the water valve and activated the
transformer primaries. Toby was
flushed with excitement. She said, “Stop
fiddling, Bill. We’re ready.”

I fed a charge to the smallest segment
of my bank of condensers. My jury-
rigged rectifier glowed ominously, but
nothing melted. I explained, “This will
all seem very remarkable at first, but be
prepared for a big let-down. Now what
would you like me to duplicate?”

“Duplicate?” Toby said, “I thought

COUNTERFEITER 85

that this rig — ”

“ — transmuted some substance into
another,” I finished for her. •‘‘It does,
but I need a prototype, a model, that is.
The raw-material is good old well-wa-
ter, but I need a pattern to copy.”

Joe flipped a half-dollar over to me,
which jarred me a little. Just so they
wouldn’t get any serious ideas, I bled off
part of the condenser charge to shorten
the time-stability factor. I laid the coin
in the hopper, dropped the lid and nar-
rowed the focus of the scanner. Every-
one jumped when I popped the switch,
which actually made more noise than the
static discharge — about like popping an
old buggy-whip.

I didn’t have to open the door. My
screw-holes for the hinges were too big
and it fell off. Anyhow, there were two
four-bit pieces. Toby goggled and
started to reach out. She drew back.
“Have to check it Jor radiation or some-
thing?”

I said, “Go ahead, pick it up. You are
thinking about cyclotrons and magne-
trons. My process is strictly an energy-
shift, a warp, a — a transfer.” I looked
at Suellen. “Like your cookie-cutter,
Sue. Joe’s half-dollar was the pattern.
We used it to punch a sort of fancy hole
in space, filled the hole with water mist
and used the electricity charge to make
up the energy disparity between water
and silver.”

No one was listening. I might as well
have read my formulas to them. Score
zero for my lecturing ability. They
passed the coin from hand to trembling
hand. As the time limit approached Joe
had the silver piece in his hand compar-
ing it with the original. “Same date,
even,” he said. “Can I keep it, Bill?”

“Sure,” I said, “but I wouldn’t put it
in my pocket if I were you.”

“Why no — hey !” he shouted. “What’s

P9

They were shocked to the bottom of
their Scotch chromosomes in spite of
my warnings. Sue whimpered, “It
melted — back to water.”

“That,” I said flatly, “is the disap-

pointment.” I turned to stalk out, but
Toby caught me. She spun me around
and jerked my head down to her alti-
tude. “You’re wonderful, Bill!” she
said and planted a most unsisterly-in-
law kiss on me that I was to remember
vividly and longingly.

T)RESS of work on the vegetable stand

delayed finishing my paper. We
sawed and hammered for a week enlarg-
ing and closing it in. And the day the
trucks arrived with our stock of grocery
staples I got a phone call from the
Foundation.

Old Stockham cackled cheerfully. To
make ends meet they had secured a con-
tract to do some stress analysis compu-
tations for General Aircraft. But their
staff was scattered to the four corners,
and could I rush down and help them
off the hook?

I told him it was our busy season, but
he mentioned a bonus figure that would
enable me to pay Toby back what I had
borrowed. I said yes in spite of Toby’s
heavy head-shakings. Dad and the
others were happy for me. Sue said
she’d help run the stand and dad could
get a hired hand if necessary. I packed.

Back at the Foundation I was swept
into a remarkable fury of activity. Be-
fore I had a chance to scrape the honest
farm soil from under my nails they were
tapping data keys on the three-story
transition computers. Research for the
sake of philosophical posterity and the
glory of dear old Siwash was a thing of
fading memory. Production was the
watchword, and I spent ten to twelve
hours a day producing for pay.

At day’s end I was too exhausted even
to work on my paper. My sole relaxa-
tion was my correspondence with the
folks. Toby wrote that the loss-leader
idea was pulling in business better than
ever, and she thought we were showing
a real profit. She seemed vague in cer-
tain areas of her description, however,
and it •smelled as though she were con-
cealing something.

In mid-August I admitted to myself I

86 THRILLING WONDER STORIES

was homesick, and a week later in the
privacy of my sleeping cell I considered
the possibility that it was really Toby
I missed. With the smallest effort I
could conjure up the scene in the hen-
house and feel her arms around my neck,
the warmth of her little vibrant body
against mine and the tingle of her lips.

When we finished the G. A. project
on the 29th, I stalled Stockham’s grate-
ful offer to keep me on at my old salary,
and I headed down the highway like a
lovesick calf. My old sports car strained
every cylinder under my impatient foot.
I arrived ahead of schedule four o’clock
in the afternoon.

The turn-off where our market was
located was obscured by some twenty
assorted vehicles of vintages older than
mine. Business was good. The ten-foot
sign registered on me. No wonder they
had customers !

HEAD LETTUCE
ONE CENT

There were other changes. Toby was
hidden behind a shiny, new cash register
which she played with one hand while
the other pawed over a mountain of
groceries and produce. People were lined
up waiting to pay for their loaded
baskets. Suellen and Joe were trucking
in cartons and fresh supplies, jamming
things, into bins all of which seemed
almost empty.

T OBY saw me gaping. She planted
a sneaker on the counter and dived
over a short, startled customer to land
all over me. I grabbed her in a hug that
should have bruised her from the neck
down, but she wriggled and gasped for
more. I had been right about her lips.
They were the juice of existence, and I
was dry. My taste was sweet but short.
She flipped back into the check stand
and yelled, “See you soon, professor.”
Reluctantly I drove on to the house.
Dad was just coming out of the old hen-
house. He met me on the porch. '“Missed
you, son,” he said quietly, and he avoided
my eye. He looked fit, and his grip was

firm as we shook hands solemnly.

“Keeping chickens again?” I asked
casually.

He went through the lengthy pipe-
loading and lighting ritual before ha
answered. “Well, I’ll tell you, Bill. Bet-
ter let Toby explain. I’m not entirely
sure I could justify what’s been goin’
on here.”

My misgivings ripened, but I was in
the shower when Toby, Sue and Joe came
up, and then no one wanted to talk much
at dinner. Afterward, Toby begged off
from the dinner dishes and got me out
on the porch swing.

“Now,” I said sternly, “what’s with
the hen-house and the one-cent sale and
all the secrecy?”

“You won*t like it,” she said, “so kiss
me first.”

With considered discretion I held her
off. “Have you been making change
with phony money?”

She shook her pigtails. “Why that
would be cheating,” she said. “Anyway,
it takes too much power to make it stick
together long enough to pass it. And
when I read the electric meter to figure
costs — well, you were right. It warn’t
practical.”

’ “All right, what have you been coun-
terfeiting?”

“Now don’t get mad, Bill. Not more
than a little mad. Remember, we’re part-
ners.”

“Tell me!” I said sharply.

“Lettuce,” she said. “And sometimes
carrots and tomatoes. It helps to vary
the special, and we were running short,
-anyway.”

“What!” I jumped to my feet, horri-
fied. She pushed me back down to the
swing.

“Now simmer down and quit worrying
until I give it to you,” she said firmly.
“I fiddled around with the rig and found
that the more power I fed to it the
longer things it produced would last.
Silver and metal stuff took a heck of a
lot of power to hold it together, but a
good-size head of lettuce used only about

COUNTERFEITER 87

half a kilowatt. On our farm rate that’s
about a half cents worth. And with that
much power our produce stands up well
for almost ten days.”

T TRIED to interrupt, but she stilled my
working lips with a soft palm. “Hold
still, now, will you ? I figured that if we
sold only perishables, people would eat
them up before they melted. I was right,
too. Haven’t had a kick all summer. Of
course, we ate some ourselves first to
be sure they weren’t poison.”

I grabbed my head and moaned. “The
Department of Agriculture, the Federal
Trade Commission, the Pure Food Bu-
reau— oh, my gosh, gosh, gosh!”
“They’ll never know.”

“You bet they won’t,” I snapped. “As
of right now the convertor is out of
business.” I had her check all made out,
but the occasion was not as I had pic-
tured it. “Here’s your $2800. Our part-
nership is dissolved.”

She took the check and stared at it
with disbelief. “Why, you — you flat-
footed city hick! You misty-eyed mor-
alist! That’s not all that’s dissolved.”
She stormed into the house slamming
the screen door so hard straw from a
swallow’s nest under the eaves showered
down on me.

Dad and Joe came out. Joe said,
“Sorry you feel that way about the con-
vertor, Bill.”

“That’s just how I feel,” I said. I
stared at them hard. “Times must be
tougher than I ever knew them when
even the farmers are out to gyp the pub-
lic.” Dad said nothing. He puffed huge
clouds of smoke at the mosquitoes.

Joe rubbed a two-day stubble of beard
on his chin. “We didn’t exactly feel like
we were cheating. So they do pay us a
penny for a cup of water? They save a
potfull of money on the rest of their
vegetables. And how much food value
do they lose when a tomato does dissolve
inside them ? Heck, it’s 90% water any-
how.”

“In other words,” I said, “a little
cheating is all right, Joe? Honesty is

just a matter of degree, is it? Is that
what dad taught us?” I got louder the
madder I became. “Do you suppose I
could publish my paper in a scientific
journal now? That would look good:
‘Young genius demonstrates new prin-
ciples of matter conversion and tomato
counterfeiting!’ And you all had the
guts to say, ‘bring honor to the name
of Blakely.’ Bring honor, my eye! Bring
cash! And Toby — if we must starve,
let’s not do it in obscurity, she said.”
Toby exploded out the front door
again. “Stop yelling at your folks, will
you ! It was all my fault.” She stood be-
fore me, denim legs apart and hands
rammed into her riveted pockets. “I’ll
admit I didn’t think about your publish-
ing the paper. All right, I didn’t think,
and I’m sorry, but you quit yelling at
people.”

In the embarrassed silence that fol-
lowed Joe and dad sat down on the front
steps, Toby flopped on the far end of the
swing, and we all stared at the full moon.
I felt righteous, lonesome and asinine.

S UELLEN popped out just then with
a platter of chocolate cake and a tray
of glasses of milk hugged against her
ample bosom. “What a gloomy looking
outfit,” she said. She served us, then
plumped down between Toby and me
with a huge wedge of cake for herself.
I watched her devour it — Suellen, who
was always on, or about to go on, a diet.

She said reflectively, “I’ve been con-
sidering putting in a little honest-to-
god bakery goods down there. City folk
don’t know good baking any more.” I
offered no comment.

She finished her cake and licked the
frosting from her pudgy fingers. “I
guess maybe we were a little dishonest,
Bill. On the other hand, we weren’t
hurtin’ anyone. And we really didn’t
make anything off the phony vegetables,
you know. They were just advertising.
City people pay higher prices than ours,
and they can’t eat the advertising they
are paying for, let alone digest it.”
Suellen’s homely reasoning made some

88 THRILLING WONDER STORIES

sense, but she could see I wasn’t about
to give in on the principle of deception.
So she got up abruptly. “Goodnight, all.
We’ll have to roll out earlier yet if we
have to pick enough lettuce for tomor-
row. C’mon, Joe.” They went in.

Dad got up. too, but he came over and
looked at Toby and me for a long mo-
ment. “You two,” he said, “don’t let
this throw you. Things will work out,
you see if they don’t.”

I looked at Toby, but she stared hard
straight ahead with her lower lip out
half an inch. I said, “I’ll be going back
to the Foundation, dad. My old job is
open, and — well, I can contribute more
that way, I guess.”

“I see, son,” dad said quietly. He went
in.

Then Toby got up and said in a flat
voice, “Good night, chum. Sorry we went
to different Sunday schools.”

I sat.there like a stuffed shirt and let
her go in alone. Then I watched the
moon go down. At midnight it had set
and my spirits with it. When I went in
I noticed a light in the kitchen. Suellen
was at the cake again. She clutched her
flannel nighty around her overfull curves
and grinned at me strangely.

“I’m going to tell Joe on you,” I said.
“Oh, he’s all for it,” she said. “You
see, this cake is converted. I — I’ve
been sneakin’ out to the henhouse every
day after I bake. Hope you don’t mind,
Bill. After all, I’m not foolin’ anybody
but myself, and it’s such fun! What a
heavenly way to reduce! Would you be-
lieve it, I’ve lost six pounds already, and
I’ve been eatin’ like a hog.”

She saw me frowning. “Honest, Bill,
I wasn’t going to sell this to the public.
My thought about the bakery was to
offer the real stuff. I think it would go.”
“Sure it would,” I said. “You make
wonderful cake, Sue. And you can use
the convertor any time if you just eat
the stuff yourself. But you get my point,
don’t you? Even if I weren’t an old maid
about deceiving people, the Pure Food
people would catch up to us sooner or
later.”

She nodded. “Sure, sure, Billy. No
hard feelings.”

“It’s like artificial coloring and pre-
servatives,” I went on, eager to justify
my earlier outburst. “It’s against the
law to use them to mislead people into
thinking that — that — ”

She looked up at me. “You look funny.
What’s the matter?”

T GRABBED the heavily frosted cake
off the platter with both hands, bit
into it and stared at it. I opened th£ door
to the stair-well with my elbow, ran up-
stairs to Toby’s room and told her to
turn on the light.

She did, and when she saw me she
pulled the covers up around her neck. I
shouted, “There’s the key ! Ixx>k at it !”
Toby scowled at me. “Looks like
Suellen’s cake to me. Have you gone
squirrely ?”

“It’s the answer, it’s the answer,” I
told her. I put the cake down on her
night stand and grabbed her shoulders.
“You were on the right track but you
had your signals crossed.”

She tried to wiggle free. “You’re get-
ting frosting on my pajamas,” she said.
“Look at your hands!”

“It’s converted cake,” I told her ex-
citedly. “In ten days those stains and
Suellen’s excess fat will dissolve to
water. Get it?”

Her eyes sparkled. “Got it. Now go
wash your hands and come back. You’re
making sense, boy.”

nnHE only advertising we did was on
the labels in which we wrapped the
bakery stuff. The boxes and sacks read:

THIS PRODUCT IS NON-FATTENING

Warning — these perishables must be consumed
within five days from date of purchase. Con-
tains digestable but completely unstable ingred-
ients warranteed not to yield fat-producing
calories upon assimilation.

Suellen and Toby baked an assortment
of prototypes, and I turned out a few
dozen of each the first day. The hen-
house took on a redolent aroma unknown

COUNTERFEITER 89

to chicken houses in all history, I will
wager.

Within a week our clientele shifted
strongly toward the better heeled trade
which arrived in long, low automobiles.
If ever you want to know about the ef-
fectiveness of word of mouth adver-
tising, call on me.

By Sunday we were exhausted. After
dinner we lay around on the lawn under
the shade trees discussing our new
problems of production.

I wanted to go into wholesaling. We
had had sevel-al offers from jobbers in
town already. Suellen and Joe wanted
to stick with the stand. Sue sighed hap-
pily. “Did you notice the late model cars
stopping now? It’s the hicks with
money. Toby was smart to insist on
charging extra for our stuff instead of
cut-pricin’. Heck, they’d pay double
again. I’m for staying with the retail

end of it and pouring it to them.”
Toby sprawled supine counting clouds,
oblivious of the grass stains soaking
into her pretty new white dress. “Just
think,” she said, “two thousand per cent
profit! That’ll teach the hicks to over-
feed their big fat mouths. You kngw we
got to expand fast. We’re almost
swamped already.”

• Dad said, “We’d better go slow. Takes
cash to expand.”

“We have it,” I told him.

Toby raised her head. “Who has it?”
“We,” I said. “You and I, partner.
Remember the dowry?”

“Yeah,” she drawled. “The dowry
that freckled-face little me would sure
need some day. Now I suppose you think
you’re man enough to collect it?”

I was. But I had to chase her clear up
to the top of the old elm tree to demon-
strate it.

THE OLDEST BOOK ON MEDICINE

T HE world’s oldest hook on medicine was discovered in Egypt some
years hack. It is estimated to be at least 3,600 years old and is
remarkable in that it contains no reference to magic. Its methods of
therapy do not include either prayers or chants.

It is organized according to subject matter and lists forty-eight
case histories. Each is a careful study of the type of ailment and
its individual pecularities in the patient concerned. The discussions
are based wholly on fact, and their manner is scientific — comparable
to case histories in modern medical journals, allowing for a smaller
store of knowledge.

The hook also has numerous illuminated descriptions of the heart
and blood vessels, as well as data suggesting that the author (or
authors) knew much more about the heart and blood stream than
the rest of the world knew up to a few centuries ago.

— Bess Killer

Fuzzy Cousin, Reamer

By CHARLES A* STEARNS

A LL OF US gawked some ; you can’t
take that out of human nature.
But my girl, Mary Ellen’s pretty little
mouth was sagging like a tired trumpet-
er’s, and in her queenly blue eyes I de-
tected a glassiness that was horrible,
let me tell you. It was the glassy look
that disturbed me. I nudged her with
my elbow and whispered, “Let’s don’t

be rude, Mary Ellen. Let’s don’t be
rude to my cousin, Reamer.”

Reamer was the first Martian that
Mary Ellen, or any of us, had ever seen.
Half-Martian, really, since his father
happened to be my Uncle Frisley, who
is a mining engineer on Mars.

We had not seen Uncle Frisley in
twenty-five years. When the family

Blood is thicker than almost anything —

even when your relatives come from Mars

90

MY FUZZY COUSIN, REAMER 91

heard about his taking a Martian wife,
they had just stopped talking — but not
necessarily thinking — about Uncle Fris-
ley. Nobody could have predicted that
anything like this would happen. It was
simply too awful to contemplate.

When we got the message that we
were supposed to meet Reamer at the
spaceport, my mother flipped her lid,
the way women are privileged to do. She
yelped a couple of yips to attract our
attention, and then fainted.

When we had revived her, she started
screaming again, right in mid-scream,
where she hadleft off. “What are we
going to do, Arnold? We’ll be ruined
socially! Imagine a shaggy ape-thing
living in the same house with us, calling
us aunt and uncle! What will our friends
say ? We’ll have to leave town — to move
out of the country. We can’t ever live
it down. Oh, Ar-r-rnold!” This last in
a long-drawn-out banshee wail.

“Now Milly,” my father said. “We’ve
got to be civil to him. He’s our kins-
man. Besides, maybe the boy will take
after Frisley.”

“Your kin, not mine!” Mother said.
“If you think for a minute that my fam-
ily would claim any relationship to a — ”

“Milly!” said Father, in the ice-water
tones of a card shark who has just dis-
covered three aces up his opponent’s
bib. My mother shut up.

Well, I didn’t even want my girl friend,
Mary Ellen, to come along with us to
the spaceport, but she said she wanted
to see a Martian once, and she would
promise not to make fun of Reamer.

Mary Ellen worked down at Baccar-
do’s, where I played the slip-horn with
Skip Sorrenson’s Un-Swedish Six. She
was our thrush, and while her head was
not much good for thinking, it was a
nice, blonde head, and it had a fine set
of pipes and a sense of pitch. She could
sing, Mary Ellen could.

All too soon, the passengers had dis-
embarked, and the first thing you know,
there he was, with his pile of matched
djaga hide luggage, and making the
Martian gesture of friendship by touch-

ing his forehead to my mother’s hand.

It was really too bad, but the fact
was, Cousin Reamer took after his
mother.

TT IS a curious thing, but my mother,

after the first, startled glance, didn’t
seem to notice tHSt- the blond — reddish
hair that seemed to completely cover
Reamer’s huge, angular body was over
three inches long — that his cranium
sloped back to a perfect point behind,
and his arms hung well below his knees.
She was really the bravest, kindest per-
son in the world. She said, “We’re very
happy to have you, Reamer. That’s your
uncle Arnold there, Reamer, and this is
my son, Harvey. Shake hands with
Reamer, Harvey.”

I shook, and said, “How do you do,
Reamer, old boy.” It seemed that he
fractured every bone in my hand.

And then I went over to Mary Ellen
and grated into Mary Ellen’s ear, “Come
off it, Mary Ellen; you’ve got to stop
that.” i

“Mind your own business,” Mary Ellen
said. Later on I learned that all women
looked at Reamer like that. I guess he
must have been used to it.

We had arrived home, and were climb-
ing out of the autocopter when my dog,
Teddie. came running out to meet us.
Teddie is a sociable dog. He began to
lavish his usual display of affection up-
on all of us.

Then he seemed to sense Reamer. He
turned and gave Reamer the once-over
for a long moment, with his glistening,
brown eyes. He stood there, nose-test-
ing, with his head low to the ground,
and then he howled in sheer terror, and
bounded out of sight around the corner
of the house. It was the last we saw
of Teddie for two days.

Mary Ellen hung around and had din-
ner with us. She and Reamer got along
very well, a perfect case example of
beauty and the beast. I took her down
to the Club early to get her away from
him, and on the way down we had our
first serious quarrel. I forgot what the

92

argument was supposed to have started
over, but we both knew what it was real-
ly about.

It was two o’clock in the morning
when I got home. Everyone else in the
house seemed to be asleep, so I had had
a quick snack and went quietly up to
bed to keep from disturbing anyone.

I couldn’t sleep. I kept thinking a lot
of crazy, moody thoughts, most of them
centering around Reamer. Reamer made
me uneasy. I had been prepared to pa-
tronize Reamer, to feel sorry for him,
but now I wasn’t so sure he needed it.
There was something about the pene-
trating blackness of his eyes. Something
about the careless grace of his apish
body. There were some strange stories
told about the Martians. Besides, Rea-
mer was half Terran, and he was cer-
tainly no square. I had a premonition
that things wouldn’t be too peaceful
during his visit.

The dogs around the community were
howling dismally, as they were to do
all night. About two-thirty I got up and
put my robe on.

I decided to walk around a bit, since I
couldn’t sleep.

The hallway light was burning dimly.
Coming up the stairs was my kid sister,
Minnie. Minnie’s eyes were half closed,
as she stumbled on the last step and
almost dropped the covered tray she
carried.

I waited for her. “Where do you think
you’re going?’’ I said. “A twelve-year-
old girl ought to have been asleep six
hours ago. You know you’re not allowed
to eat in bed.”

She gazed at me with bleared, slitted
eyes, and said nothing.

“Well.”

“It’s for cousin Reamer. I’m taking
it up to Reamer.”

I lifted the napkin. There were sev-
eral carrots and three pork chops on the
tray.

Raw pork chops.

“That’s a fine thing,” I said. “What’s
the matter with you, Min, have you been
walking in your sleep again?”

M INNIE’S lower lip began to quiver
ominously. “I’m not asleep. He
likes them this way. The pork chops, I
mean.”

“All right, all right,” I said. “Don’t
start yelling.” I took the tray out of her
hands. “Now run and hop "back into
bed. You’ve been having a nightmare.”
She didn’t move. I balanced the tray
on the newel post, and took her by the
hand. I took her to her room, tucked her
in bed, and shut the door behind me.
During all this time she didn’t make a
sound of protest. I went back, picked
up the tray, and started downstairs.
Then, I thought I could feel eyes boring
into my back; upon impulse I glanced
behind me.

I must have jumped a foot. Cousin
Reamer’s shaggy head was poked around
the edge of his door, and his eyes were
glittering with a dark, preternatural in-
terest in what was going on.

“What’s the matter?” I said, with
some irritation.

“Sorry if I startled you,” Reamer said.
“Having a snack?”

“Well, no. I — that is — yes, I suppose
so. 1 was going to, but I changed my
mind-”

“Let me have it, then,” said Reamer
eagerly. “I’m starved. That is, if you
don’t mind. Say, why not bring it into
my room, and we’ll both make short
work of it.”

“Well, I don’t know. I — ”

But Reamer was already holding the
door open for me, looking clownish in
his plaid pajamas.

I set the tray down upon his night-
table, and he whisked the napkin off
quickly. He gave the chops and the car-
rots a quick look.

“It was dark,” I said, trying to ex-
plain the raw chops. “I must have . .

“Oh, boy!” Reamer said. He picked
up a chop by its handle and bit into it.
A trace of blood trickled from the cor-
ner of his mouth, and he wiped it daintily
with his napkin.

I figured it was about time for a show-
down. I said, “Did you by any chanee

93

MY FUZZY COUSIN, REAMER

order three raw pork chops and five car-
rots to be brought up to your room by
my little sister, Minnie?”

He stared at me. “Of course not. I’ll
admit I was thinking about it. I woke
up a moment ago, ravenously hungry,
and—”

“Minnie said you were. But it doesn’t
explain how she knew.”

“So that’s it,” said Reamer after a
moment. “That explains it. I should
have been more careful. Have a pork
chop, will you ?”

“No thanks. Maybe it explains it to
you. but it doesn’t to me.”

He shrugged his shaggy shoulders.
“A thing called ‘natural empathy’ ” he
said.

TVTATURAL empathy? That’s the same
thing as thought transmission, isn’t

it?”

“Not exactly. More of a wish trans-
ference, you might say. It’s common
among the Martian males. It’s how we
control the females. Within a given ra-
dius about any male, the females are
obliged to — but I say, haven’t you heard
of this before?”

“I’d heard some stories,” I admitted,
“but I don’t like the sound of this thing.
On Earth, men and women are created
free and equal.”

Reamer took a bite of chop. He looked
slightly amused. “An odd system,” he
said. “On Mars, the females live ex-
pressly for the pleasure and convenience
of the males. They are attracted to the
males at all times by the empathic aura,
and are emotionally drawn to them.
They sense the male’s incompleteness
and strive to give him what he wants.”

“The howling dogs?” I said.

“Animals are very sensitive. I must
be more careful.”

“Hah !” I said.

“I’m really sorry that my thought
emanations awakened your sister. Nat-
urally, I had no way of knowing. I will
try to control myself after this.” He
reached for the last chop and then drew
back. “Are you sure you won’t — ?”

“No,” I said. He took the chop.

“I don’t think you’ll like it on Earth,
Reamer,” I told him. “Of course, you’re
welcome to stay with us, and we’ll try to
make your visit pleasant, but — ” ,

Reamer stopped eating, and delicately
licked the fur on his forearm with his
pink tongue. He said, “But it isn’t a
visit, you know.”

“It isn’t?”

“I have come to stay.” He dropped
his eyes to his coverlet and looked very
sad and alone for a minute or so. Then
he said, “I had heard that the people
of Earth w r ere very tolerant of aliens;
that is why I came here. You see, I am
an alien on Mars too, and Martians can
be very cruel to one who is different.
Merely because one’s fur happens to be
a different color—”

And all of a sudden I felt sorry for
Reamer. I had never thought of it that
way before. To full-blooded Martians he
must appear as freakish as he did to us.
And his male empathy would be no spe-
cial advantage there, where it was so
common.

“One other thing,” I said. “Do all
Martians eat raw' — ”

“Raw carrots?” said Reamer, picking
up one and biting the end off it. “No,
I’m afraid it’s a rather disgusting habit
that I picked up from my father. If it
offends you — ” He laid the carrot down.

* While I w'as trying to think up an
answer to that one, the . knock at the
door came.

“Now who would that be?” asked
Reamer.

I went over and opened the door.

Mother w as standing there. She looked
sleepy, but resolute. She was carrying a
tray. On the tray was the only t-bone
steak in the house. It was uncooked.

1\/TY FATHER was a quiet man with
-L’-l peptic ulcers and a conventional be-
lief about homes being castles, and the
like. I had never seen such a desperate
look on his face as that evening when
he called me into his study. He said.
“Son, we’ve got to do something about

94 THRILLING WONDER STORIES

it. Things have gone as far as they can
go if I keep my sanity.”

I knew what he meant, but I wanted
to hear him say it.

“Your cousin, Reamer, has usurped
this household, lock, stock arid inmates.
Your mother pays about as much atten-
tion to me these days as if I were Teddie
there. Minnie, your sister, has gotten to
be completely incorrigible. Whenever
Reamer is around, I simply can’t do a
thing with her. She won’t mind me.

“And he sits around smoking my ci-
gars, and being oh-so-damned civil and
polite! Got to give him credit for that,
you know. The boy’s got proper man-
ners. Learned it from Frisley, I’ll war-
rant, (and look where it got Frisley!).
We’ve got to do something about this
confounded business. This ‘empathy,’ as
he calls it, has gone far enough. Yester-
day I saw your mother search out my
last bottle of medicinal whisky, and —
well it’s just got to stop, that’s all. A
good thing I am a moral man, son, or
I’d be staying out at nights myself. Yes,
and I think I will, by George, if there is
ever a night that Reamer doesn’t bor-
row the car.”

“I know how you feel.” I said. “It’s
the same way with Mary Ellen, but
what can I do?”

“Get him a job.”

“Me? But why don’t you get him
one?”

He snorted. “I’m an architect. The
carpenters’ and joiners’ union would
never allow me to hire an alien — espe-
cially one who looks like an outsized
Barbary ape. But it’s different with you.
That drummer in the band, for instance,
is almost a dead ringer for Reamer.
Swing bands cater to odd types like
Reamer.”

“But what could Reamer do?”

“IIow the hell should I know.”

“Reamer doesn’t have much sense of
humor, v I said, “but I’ll see Skip Sorren-
son about it.”

Skip Sorrenson, who is a right guy
all the way through, listened while I told
him the whole story. He thought it over.

“We might be able to use him,” he
said, “if he’s willing to stooge, and take
a few prattfalls. We might even double
him in the band — for novelty — if we can
teach him to play some instrument.
People will come to see a Martian. It
ought to be a great drawing card.”
“Thanks,” I said. “That’s swell, Skip.
I’ll tell cousin Reamer about it.”

And I did. I broke it gently to Reamer
that he was going to have to go to work
if heji'anted to keep eating regularly. I
expected him to take it a little hard. I
certainly didn’t expect it to have'' the
effect on him that it did.

Reamer was tickled to death. He
preened himself. He strutted up and
down in his blue silk lounging robe,
with the Martian ghaza-birds on it.

“I’ll do it,” he said. “My baritone
isn’t so bad, if I do say so. Maybe they’d
like me to do a number with Mary Ellen.
I could learn to blow a trumpet, too.
Why this is great!”

He hadn’t quite got the idea, but I
thought it was better for Skip to fill him
in. That Mary Ellen business was a
sore spot with me anyway. Mary Ellen
was still indulging in an unseasonable
coolness toward me, and I knew that
Reamer had taken her out a couple of
times this week. You put Reamer in a
tux, and clip the hair on his face, the
way he clipped it now, he wasn’t so bad
looking, even without this devil’s ad-
vantage he had of being able to influence
female ids. I was beginning to be an-
noyed with Reamer.

“Come on down tonight,” I said.
“You’ll have to get there by six to work
out something with Skip for the first
floor show.”

TMIE way it turned out, Reamer in-
sisted on singing, and Skip tried
him out. We didn’t have a male singer,
and it turned out that when Reamer
growled it wasn’t half as bad as we had
expected.

“Sure,” whispered Skip to me, kindly,
“let him go' ahead. I hate to break his

(Turn to page 96)

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98 THRILLING WONDER STORIES

heart. And if the customers think it’s
funny a gorilla should be singing, we can
always turn it into a comedy act. He
might not like that, but we’d have to do
it. Okay?”

“It’s your show,” I said. “Either he
makes good, or he gets pie in his face.”

I guess you would say that Reamer
made good with a vengeance. When he
first shuffled out on the stage, a woman
at one of the front 'tables screamed.
The house was packed, and we had bally-
hooed him as a great artist from Mars,
but you could tell they didn’t believe it.
They thought it was a gag. Until he
started to sing.

After a moment of awe-struck silence,
a man at a corner table guffawed. His
wife slapped him across the face.

That was the only sound that was
made. When Reamer finished, they ap-
plauded wildly. Reamer bowed and
showed his inch-long yellow fangs. He
was already becoming quite a ham.

After that night the weeks passed
even more drearily for me than before.
Mary Ellen had forgotten that first, silly
quarrel, but it seemed that every time
we spoke to one another we got into
some kind of argument about Reamer,
so we just stopped seeing each other, ex-
cept at the club. I had an idea that
Reamer was seeing her more often than
that, and I had to do something about it.
But what?

I was a long time getting the idea.
Reamer was becoming well known, but
he had still sung only before small night-
club audiences. If I could book him on
a tour, then he’d have to travel and leave
Mary Ellen behind. Also, he wouldn’t
be underfoot around the house any more.

But it didn’t work out that way. Plans
hardly ever did for me. Reamer liked
the idea well enough, but he said he
wouldn’t have anybody but me for a
manager. I was flattered enough to ac-
cept, and the way it finally turned out,
we booked the whole gang, Mary Ellen,
and Skip Sorrenson’s Un-Swedish Six
for a six month tour.

I still hadn’t got them apart, but we

were so busy after that, there wasn’t
much time to think about anything but
business for a while.

We had leaped, somehow, right into
big-time. Our fame spread on ahead of
us and it grew in each new town. We
drew record crowds, and we added nov-
elty acts to our group until we grew
bigger and richer with each mile. We
had three copterbuses with our name
printed on the sides in gold letters.

Reamer’s head swelled so that he
would hardly speak to the band members
—with the exception of Mary Ellen, who
was still hexed, when she had time to
think about it, by Reamer.

When Reamer went on the stage, you
could hear the women screaming and
yelling. It was sickening, but he loved
it. He played it up for all he was worth,
sending his emphatic aura full strength
over the audience, playing them like
fish. If it hadn’t been for restraining
men in the audience — but I’ll get to that
presently. . . .

When I got around to it, I still had
my original problem, and it was growing
worse. If I won Mary Ellen back,' I’d
have to take some really drastic action.

I wasn’t mad at cousin Reamer, but
I wished I had never set eyes on him.
He meant no harm — he never did — but
he couldn’t stand the sudden flux of
prosperity and fame, I suppose. There
was a lot of unrest in the band because,
as it was with Mary Ellen, so it was
with all the other eligible females we
happened to run across, and the Un-
Swedish Six, after all, were men, with
normal male instincts. With Reamer
around, the rest of us might as well have
been in Timbuktu.

We grumbled among ourselves, and
let it ride.

TT WAS the fifth of April that we

played at the Platt Women’s College
at Stockwell, Pennsylvania.

It was the biggest audience we had
ever had, and likely to be the rowdiest.
I had misgivings about that audience
from the first. Ten thousand females

MY FUZZY COUSIN, REAMER 97

Without the moderating influence of a
Single male.

I tried to persuade Reamer to cancel,
this one, or at least underplay his act
here, but he said he didn’t have any-
thing to do with his personality. The
empathy just worked automatically, and
he couldn’t help the way it affected wom-
en. He was going to give it all he had.

“All right,” I said. “Remember that
I warned you.” It occurred to me that
this might be an opportunity to be rid
of Reamer once and for all, if things
happened the way I thought they would.

I went out and made an investment
that I thought might come in handy, and
when I got back it was time to go on.

They were howling for Reamer before
our introductory number was half fin-
ished. The audience was so noisy that it
was hard to play. There were catcalls
and screams. Rennie Masters, the drum-
mer, got so rattled that he dropped both
his sticks, stood up to get them and fell
•flat on his back when they rolled under
his feet.

When Reamer came on, the deafening
noise died. Reamer spread' it on a bit
thick, with ali the flourishes and ges-
tures that he had picked up from the
cinema stars. But they didn’t laugh. You
could almost see the thick, cloying mag-
netism of Reamer, wafted over that hall.

Reamer growled and groaned. He
mumbled and crooned. He boiled and
simmered. He clutched the mike in his
hand and bent like a reed in a stiff wind.

And when he finished they didn’t clap.
They poured purposefully out into the
aisles, a roiling river of maddened
females, screaming, clamoring, shoving
one another. It was just as I had known
it would be. They made for Reamer.

Reamer turned to me; I had come to
stand beside him in this climactic mo-
ment.

- “What’s the matter with them ?” said
Reamer, sounding scared.

"They liked you,” I said. “They love
you, Reamer.”

"Then what are they going to do ?”

“What they always do to great stars.

You’ve become a great star ' tonight.
They’re coming to get souvenirs and
autographs, Reamer.”

“Souvenirs ?”

“Your tie. Pieces of your coat and
trousers. Your colored vest. Swatches of
your fur and small patches of your
skin.”

“No!” bleated Reamer in horror.

“But you must let them ; they’re your
public. A star belongs to his public.”

“I won’t do it,” Reamer said. “You
can’t make me. I knew that Earth wom-
en were crazy, but you’re crazy too, Har-
vey, if you think I’m going to stand here
and let them tear me apart. You’ve got
to get me out of here. You hear me,
Harvey ?”

'T’HAT was where my plan came in. I
had seen this kind of thing happen
before. I hated to do what I was about
to do, even to Reamer, but it had come
to a matter of self-preservation.

“Okay,” I said. “Follow me, and make
it snappy.” We ran toward the wings. I
turned and shoved a rather large, blonde
young woman, who threatened to block
our way, so hard that she fell off the
stage. I hated to do it, but I couldn’t let
her spoil everything.

The side door was closed. It could only
be opened from the inside.

“Now, Reamer,” I said. I opened the
door and gave him a push. Then I
slammed it behind him. while I stayed
there to fend off the mob as long as pos-
sible.

But a thunderous sound was swelling
up behind me, outside the door. It was
even louder than the noise within. For
just as I had suspected, while ten thou-
sand women were inside the auditorium,
fully half the turn-away crowd had lin-
gered outside the stage door to waylay
the escaping quarry if he should come
that way. They had played this game
before.

Poor Reamer !

I waited in the auditorium for Rea-
mer. Everyone else had gone home.
Even Mary Ellen, who didn’t know what

98 THRILLING WONDER STORIES

had happened, and thought that Reamer get away from them all.”

had stood her up.

It was very quiet in there, and I had
almost begun to doze. Three hours had
gone by. Then I saw him — a vague dark
shape slinking across the back of the
stage.

“Hey, Reamer!” I 'said. He sprang
into the air.

“Oh, it’s you,” he said, relieved. He
came forward and sat down with his legs
dangling over the footlights beside me.
He was almost naked. Great tufts of fur
had been torn out, and he looked inex-
pressibly weary. His eyes were red, for-
lorn and hopeless. A stranger would
have mistaken him for a very discour-
aged ape.

“What happened, Reamer?”

He gave me a penetrating look. For a
moment I thought that he had guessed
that T betrayed him. But apparently not,
for he began to tell me all that had be-
fallen him.

After losing his clothing and much of
his fur, he said, he had wrenched loose
from them and fled down the street.
Seeing a high stone wall, he had pulled
himself over it. He shook his head sadly.
That had been the final straw, the thing
which had broken his spirit forever and
eternally.

He had landed in the middle of a so-
rority lawn party.

“Well,” I said, “it’s too bad, but you’ve
got to expect this sort of thing from now
on. You’re a celebrity. Reamer, and you
belong to the people, like I said. There’s
nothing we can do about it.”

“I won’t put up with it,” Reamer said.
“I’ll go away.”

“But where can-you go unless you go
back to Mars? You’re too well known on
Earth. You’re a star, and I’ll bet you get
your name in Who’s Who, and the
World Almanac next year.”

“Mars is out,” he said. “Father
wouldn’t have me back anyway. I never
told you before, Harvey, but I got into
a lit t’e trouble up there. I haven’t got
time to go into detail about it now. No,
I’ve got to find someplace where I can

“Well,” I said, “if you insist, Reamer.

. Have you got any money ?”

“Fifteen dollars,” Reamer said. “I lost
the rest playing poker with that crowd
in Aubon City last night.”

“Here,” I said, taking the ticket from
my pocket that I had bought for this
purpose. “Here is air-fare to the West
Coast, where you can maybe start over,
Reamer. I bought it to go on a vacation,
but you can have it and pay me later. I
sure hate to see you leave us.”

Reamer took it. He said that he was
much obliged.

I T WAS a couple of years before I saw
Reamer again. At least I think I saw
him. It was only for a few seconds, you
understand, so I couldn’t be certain.

I got this letter from Reamer one
morning which said,

“Dear Harve, •

I’m writing this to let you know I’ll be
in your town for a one-night stand next
Thursday. I’m still in show business. I
guess once it ' gets in your blood there’s
nothing you can do about it. This time it’s
the Carney circuit. A real good job, and
nobody knows who I am. I’d appreciate it
if you didn’t tip anybody off that I’m in
town, but maybe you could bring Mary
Ellen down so that I can see her. I
wouldn’t want her to know, but I’d like to
see her. I thought a lot of her, you know.
Sorry I tried to cut you out, but I guess
you’ve made up for lost time.

“Just walk down the midway, Thursday
night, for old time’s sake, Harve. That’s
all I ask. I’ll see you even if you don’t see
me. I like this work fine but I get a little
lonesome sometimes. How about it?

Your cousin,
Reamer.”

I could hardly refuse Reamer, and I
figured that it wouldn’t be too risky to
bring Mary Ellen along. After all, we
had been married more than ten months.

So we did it. We went down and we
bought cotton candy, buttered popcorn,
some flat-tasting ice-cream, and hot-
dogs. We shot at the Venusian lizard
horses on the rack with stopper guns,
rode the Rocket, played a dollar pitching

MY FUZZY COUSIN. REAMER 99

game and the Moon lottery. We had a
hell of a time.

But I didn’t see anything of Reamer.

Once Mary Ellen noticed me looking,
and she asked me what I was trying to
find.

“Nothing much,” I said.

We had crowded up close to listen to a
talented . talker. He was yelling it up.
“. . . twenty-five cents, one fourth part
of a dollah, ladeeze and gentlemen!
Come in and see the five-legged pony, see
the moon maidens; see the wild gheks
from Venus. The giant, three hundred
pound rats from Saturn. Step right up,
you good people ! Only two-bits. Hurreh,
hurreh, hurreh ! See the whiskered
woman . . . see the Mercurian wild man
. . . hurreh. . . !”

We bought two tickets and went in.
We walked along the sawdust aisles,
hand in hand. It was pretty dark. They
kept it that way so that discerning cus-
tomers would not become too critical of
the marvels.

I was looking at a thing that seemed
to be a cross between a giraffe and a
musk ox, with an obviously puttied-on
human face, when I noticed that Mary
Ellen was standing stock-still, and quiv-
ering slightly, like a sensitive bird dog
come to point.

“What’s the matter, Mary Ellen?” I

asked. She was staring at a dark cage
over to the left. v

She didn’t answer, but that far-off
glazed look in her eyes was reminiscent.
She took a slow step toward the cage,
seeing, apparently more than I could see.
She took another step. She was close
now. Too close.

Something huge and furry flung itself
against the bars, growling a low, bestial
growl at us, ravening at the intruders.
I could not make out the form of it, but
it was blue — a brilliant blue, and it was
•most certainly savage. The blue could
have been dye, but the savagery was real
enough.

Mary Ellen fell back into- my arms, in
alarm. I held her there for an instant,
with her head buried in my lapel, and I
looked over her shoulder at the thing,
which had now become quiet. It had its
face pressed against the bars — a not
unhandsome face. One dark eye was
plainly visible. And then — I swear — it
ha^nened.

The eye winked at me!

I swear it did.

What could I do? I winked back of
course, and I nodded and tried to smile.
But I got something in mv eye iust then,
dammit. I had to take Mary Ellen and
get out of there, into the fresh, cool
night air.

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Backlash

By GUY DeANGELIS

A FTER the red thunder of our escape
velocity had blasted us free of
Mars we should have been able to relax
and wait until Earth came rolling across
our trajectory to suck us in out of no-
where. But this wasn’t like any other
voyage I’d ever been on, and I prowled
the ship at all hours.

Wherever I went, Monk went with

me. If I was the one who could find trou-
ble, he was the one who could take care
of it. Finally he said, “Lucky what’s
eating on you?”

“What do you think?”

He shrugged. “That’s what I’m ask-
ing you. I’ve seen you in the clutch plen-
ty of times but it’s never hit you like
this before. I’ve got a hunch' you know

They'd laugh him out of the service if he dared to tell the truth

100

BACKLASH 101

something the rest of us don’t."

He didn’t know how right he was.
Everybody on board had an idea that we
were carrying something important, but
I knew just how vital it actually was.
What was more, I knew the enemy had
a man on board who wasn’t going to let
us get home with it, if he had to scuttle
the ship to stop us. I knew who he was
too. But there wasn’t anything I could
do about it.

Monk grabbed my arm. “Lucky — that
thing in the strongroom! Is it the key?
Is that what we’ve got on board? Is
that what’s bothering you?” We had
stopped for some coffee in the supply
room of my section, a place not much
bigger than a closet. I jerked my head
at the door and he closed it.

“Yes, it’s the key,” I said, after a mo-
ment. “The thing everybody has been
looking for ever since the first Martian
expedition.”

“What do you know! What kind of
a thing is it?”

“Remember the Rosetta stone in our
own Terran history?”

He shook his head. “You know I
haven’t any brains except in my fin-
gers."

“Well, roughly, it was a stone left by
an ancient people and the effect of it
was to explain their written language.
And this one the Martians left is enough
like it to give you the creeps. Three
sided, with simple pictures on one side,
the written symbols for the pictures on
another side and the phonetic symbols
for the same objects on the third side.
You know — vocal chord diagrams and
layouts for the position of the lips and
tongue. The Martians must have been
a lot like us.”

Like us, yes — but the writings they
had left behind looked like cobwebs and
the spools of crystal thread they had
recorded their speech on were nothing
but gibberish when we played them.
And since the Martians hadn’t been a
picture-minded people we had no refer-
ence points at all. But now we could
decipher the cobweb writing, and trans-

late the alien Martian speech.

“Hey!” Monk was saying. “That
means we get first crack at the Martian
science, doesn’t it? And the drive! They
had it, didn’t they?”

“That’s what the experts say," I told
him. “There wasn’t any decline and fall
of the Martian empire. They just put
the whole darned planet in order when
it got too old and took off into the wild
black. They must have had some sort
of star-travel drive, because there isn’t
any sign of their civilization anywhere
else in the solar system.”

And that was more than we had been
able to develop. The time element had
us trapped in our own little system. We
couldn’t even beat the speed of light
with direct rocket drive, no matter what
we powered the tubes with.

“A subspace drive,” Monk breathed.
“Man, what we couldn’t do with that.
We could outmaneuver anything the
Sinatics could put in space. The stars
would belong to us, Lucky! The whole
darned galaxy and more. And we could
put the lid on this damned cold war for
good and breathe slow and easy for a
change!” v

“I hope so,” I said. For seventy-five
years there had been an uneasy truce
between the Atlantic Federation and
the Sinatic League — the Sino-Asiatic
powers headed by what had been Red
China before China had absorbed Rus-
sia. Or what w r as left of Russia after
the First Atomic War. Earth itself was
split into two armed camps and there
were outposts on every habitable planet
and satellite in the system. Including
some w'hich were habitable only by a
wide stretch of technology.

“Wait a minute,” Monk said. “How
do you know this thing is the key, and
how r do you know' what it’s like? I
thought the F.S.S. man we got aboard
and maybe the captain were the only
ones w'ho had the complete dope on this
mission.”

“They’re supposed to be,” I admitted.
“But I know too. I can’t tell you how I
found out.”

102 THRILLING WONDER STORIES

TTE WOULDN’T have believed me if I
had told him. Nobody would believe
me if I told them I could send my invis-
ible consciousness into the strongroom
— or any other secret place — to see
everything with an inner sight and to
know its touch with intangible fingers.
That was the way I had managed to
build a reputation as a safety engineer.
I could sense my way through solids .as
easily as I could see through a pane of
glass, so that I knew when things were
going wrong long before others could
detect any sign of it.

“Lucky” Hammond they called me. I
was lucky like a black cat walking under
a ladder on Friday the thirteenth, be-
cause I was born a mental freak and my
whole life had been one long lie. People
with extra-sensory perception weren’t
too rare. But I had more than that. I
was what psychiatrists were beginning
to call a “paradept.” It was a new term
because it was a newly discovered aber-
ration. There were only two others like
me in the whole Federation, that I had
ever heard of. One of them had gone
raving crazy two years before and the
other was an invalid who lived the life
of a laboratory guinea pig.

In addition to my ability to sense the
very pattern of matter, I had limited
telekinetic power over it. Particularly
with electronic equipment. I could re-
ceive and send radar and trivid signals
and images over short distances without
any equipment at all. It was logical
enough, since the encephalograph had
proved centuries before that thought
was electronic and could even be meas-
ured with almost primitive equipment.
Worst of all, I could do just that: read
thought. I could peer into people’s
minds when they didn’t know I was
looking, but I did darned little of it. I
found out pretty young that that kind of
thing could turn you into a madman or
a saint. Or both, in a hurry.

And I didn’t want to be either. I had
wanted out into space since I was a kid.
So I had followed a kid’s normal instinct
to conform to the herd. And I had coun-

terfeited normality well enough to make
the Federation’s academy and to get a
commission in the space service — the
last place in the universe where an off-
type would be tolerated. But I had to
hold onto that commission now.

Once a man has watched the whole
earth dwindle away to a pinpoint in the
void, you can’t tie him down to it any
more. It would be more merciful to
stake him out on an anthill to be eaten
to bits. Every time a grounded space-
man sees a ship take off into the black
a part of him goes with it until, after a
while, there’s nothing left of him at
all

“What do you think of Jerold Fron-
tenac, Monk?” I asked.

He stared. “Who, me? I think he’s
captain of this hooker. That’s all I have
to know.”

I knew a little more than that. I won-
dered whom we had planted in the Si-
natic fleet. A couple of admirals, I
hoped. Because Jerold Frontenac — the
D’Artagnan of Space, the facsipapers
called him — belonged to the enemy. And
I hadn’t found out until it was too late.
Until we had reached Mars, picked up
the Martian stone, and blasted off for
Earth again.

I suppose that as soon as the explora-
tion party at Little Atlantica had found
the stone on Mars, they had alerted
home base. And a warship had been
sent out from Earth to ferry it home.
She was a beautiful craft — a brand new
Annihilator Class cruiser fresh from a
moonside shakedown cruise. Being
tapped for the voyage had seemed like
an honor at the time. Now I was willing
to let anybody have my share of the
glory.

T^RONTENAC had called an officers’
^ meeting as soon as we were clear of
Mars. He had paced the bridge in front
of us, elegant as a dress sword and twice
as keen, smoothing his silver-gilt hair
down on the back of his head with one
palm. “I can’t tell you anything about
this voyage except that it’s of vital im-

BACKLASH 103

portance to every man, woman and
child in the Federation,” he had said.
He stopped and looked at Fisher, the
Federal Secret Service man, before he
went on. “Commander Fisher has the
authority to kill me where I stand if I
said anv more. And I suspect he would,
too.”

Fisher said nothing. He simply looked
up at the captain and nodded. Fronte-
nac grinned and bowed to him before
he turned to me. “Have you any sug-
gestions, Mr. Hammond?”

“No, sir.”

“With your record as a safety officer,
I’m sure I don’t have to remind you that
you’re responsible for this ship between
worlds.”

“No, sir,” I repeated, after a moment.
I hesitated because I knew, all at once,
that there was something abnormal
about him; something menacing. My
reaction was as definite as if he had
pulled a knife on me, but I couldn’t
analyze it. So I forced myself to look
into his mind, and I saw what he was
thinking, as plainly as if it had been
printed on his forehead.

This is the one I have to look out for,
he was thinking. The one who’s supposed
to have eyes in the back of his head. It
would be a lot easier if I could get rid
of him.

And — because connected thought
is almost impossible to an individual ed-
ucated through the use of words, except
in terms of words — I knew he was think-
ing in the wrong language. He was
thinking in the new common language
of the Sinatic League — colloquial Sinese.

Since then, I hadn’t 'had a moment’s
peace.

My conscience wouldn’t let me rest.
Tell them, it demanded. Then I asked
myself what good that would do. If I
told them I was a paradept they’d only
think I’d gone mad. I’ve got to have
proof, I told myself. I’ve got to catch
him red-handed. It’s the only way. But
my conscience said:

You’re lying — and it’s the same old
lie. You won’t tell because you’re afraid

someone will believe you — not because
you’re afraid they won’t. You’re afraid
you’ll lose your ticket and be ground-
ed. .. .

Suddenly, as I sat in the supply room
drinking coffee with Monk, I knew that
trouble had come aboard.' It was a shrill,
wordless sensation like a little alarm
bell ringing far back in my mind. I got
up.

“What now?” Monk asked, looking at
the spilled coffee.

“Trouble,” I told him.

He groaned. “Don’t even use that
word!”

“Shut up,” I whispered, groping. But
it was no use. “Come on,” I said. “We’ll
check ship again.” I headed for the
strong room first. As usual, Fisher was
there, looking out of the Judas window
in the door. His lean, sharp face was
so much like the edge of an ax I almost
expected to hear his lids clank when
he blinked at me.

“What’s on your mind, Hammond?”
“Routine check, Commander.”

; “All secure here.”

There was no one on the bridge ex-
cept a communications officer conning
a radar screen. He looked up at me and
yawned. “Hi, Lucky. Wajit anything?”
“Routine check, that’s all.”

“All secure here.”

TN THE engine room the pile sat in
sanctum behind its shields, nothing
but the governor heads on the con-
verter showing. The man on watch was
trying hard not to nod sleepily. “All
clear, Chief?” I asked.

“All secure here, Lieutenant.”

We headed forward again. “How you
doing?” Monk asked.

“I’ve got a hunch it’s all over the ship
at once. I can’t localize it, Monk!”
“Relax. You will.”

I grunted and jammed my forehead
against a bulkhead to see if bone con-
duction would do any good. But I
couldn’t smooth my mind out into a re-
ceptive blank. It was too full of conflict,
and panic. Monk seemed all blurry when

I looked up and he was swaying on his
feet. Then I caught on.

People blinking, yawning, nodding.
All over the ship! I grabbed Monk by
the shoulders and shook him, yelling in
his face. “Monk! It’s in the air ducts!”

When we got to tempcontrol, the man
on duty was laid out cold on the deck.
Monk stumbled toward the housing for
the main filter at the base of the master
conduit. My hands seemed to have
turned into fingerless mittens of dead
flesh as I wrenched the alarm box open.
My knuckles clicked on a big yellow but-
ton and transcribed voices all over the
ship began to yell, “Gas! Gas! Gas!”

“Cartridge canister!” Monk said.

“Check!” I took a canister from a
rack, shook out the filter cartridge, and
set the empty at his feet.

“Hold your breath!”, he said thickly,
and the housing clanged open. Monk
managed to scoop out the poison car-
tridge, jam it into the canister, and
lever the air-tight clasp shut. Then he
fell. I stepped over him and fed the
clean cartridge into the housing. I
closed the housing and pushed the con-
trol over to forced draft. The blowers
began to roar. I got hold of Monk’s arm
and the other man’s foot and dragged
them out into the companionway before
I went down.

The hurricane I had started in the
ducts took effect almost at once and I
stayed down for a moment, sobbing in
fresh air. Monk sat up. “You all right?”
I asked.

“Yeah. Lucky, that was neuroform,
that stuff. It belongs in the sick bay,
not in the air filters. You know what I
mean ?”

“I know,” I said. “In another couple
of minutes everybody aboard would
have gotten a lethal dose of it.” All but
one man, waiting in the privacy of a
captain’s cabin. One man, grinning be-
hind the safety of a gas mask, probably.

Frontenac called another officers’
meeting, but it didn’t do any good. Eve-
rybody knew it couldn’t have been an
accident, so that the enemy had lost

some ground. Everybody knew we had a
saboteur aboard now. An old Biblical
phrase kept thrusting into my mind as
Frontenac talked. It was “Thou art the
man!” But I couldn’t use it. I had noth-
ing to back it up but the recurring sus-
picion that there was something wrong
about him: some physical evidence

which would betray him, if I could only
discover what it was. Then he threw
me off stride completely by saying:
“Well done, Mr. Hammond. Your
name will be entered on today’s log.”

I wished I could tell him what to do
with his log. “Chief Safetyman John
Maxim was with me, sir,” I told him.
“Maxim’s name will be entered, too.”
Then he gave orders to double the
guard on the strongroom and to put the
whole ship on orbital alert. I don’t sup-
pose he liked it, but it might have
seemed peculiar if he hadn’t.

It was a bad business, being on orbital
alert while we were still twenty.million
miles from anything at all. None of us
got much sleep. I caught a couple of
men napping on watch and had to turn
them in. Everyone on board must have
been sick of my face. I know I was sick
of theirs. Sick of Fisher’s, framed in
the Judas window of the strongroom.
Sick of Frontenac’s. There were mo-
ments when I almost hated Monk Max-
im’s face, with its round brown eyes, a
little like a dog’s.

But most of all, I think, I hated my-
self.

I was deep in the ship’s core when
the waiting finally came to an end.
Monk and I were checking over a hold,
when I felt a sore spot like a' tiny burn
blistering my brain tissue. I knew what
that meant. “Hold it!” I said. “There’s
something hot aboard.”

“Fission?” he asked.

“Yes. Near critical point. Too damned
near.”

“Where ?”

“I can’t fix it from here. We’ll have
to prowl.”

He grabbed at me. “Th^re may be no
time for that. Lucky, try the strong-

104

room where the key is. That’s what
they’re after!”

“I’ll never know, now, hpw much
Monk knew about me and how much he
only suspected. But something told me
he was right. I tried the strongroom
as I stood there in the hold — not trying
to visualize it but merely exposing my
consciousness to it. In an instant the
stone developed in my mind, clearly,
even though I could sense that it was
shut away in a vault. The little blister
of sensation which had warned me still
remained, and it was centered directly
over my image of the stone.

“You tagged it!” I said. “Let’s go.”

nPHE two men on guard tried to stop
us when we got there. This was no
time for respectfully requesting permis-
sion — which we wouldn’t get anyway.
Monk rammed one man in the belly with
his head and I stooped and sent the
other flying over my back with a quick
body block. Fisher rasped at me:

“Hold it right there, Hammond!”

His hand came out of the window
with a blaster in it. That was his mis-
take. I was close enough to grab his
gun wrist and pull it over my shoulder
as I spun. My shoulder-blades slammed
into the door with all my weight behind
them and Monk hit it at the same time.
The door crashed open. Fisher yelped
as I levered his arm down. His blaster
hit the deck.

“Monk— it’s in the vault,” I gasped.
“On top of the stone. Get it!”

Both guards were up again and
charging at us. I got one in the middle
with a savage kick and then pulled the
other off Monk’s back. Monk lunged
into the strongroom and tried to fight
his way past Fisher. I backhanded the
guard and he fell. Monk was trying to
dial the vault open and hold Fisher off
at the same time. The F.S.S. man’s
gun arm dangled broken. I hauled him
out of the strongroom and stiffened him
with a short hook. But he had already
tripped off an alarm and canned voices

[ Turn page ]

105

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were yelling, “Strongroom ! Strong-
room !” everywhere. I heard feet pound-
ing on the deck, coming nearer and
nearer, and I turned back to the strong-
room to help Monk. I didn’t get to him
in time.

Later — much later — I learned that it
was a hand bomb he had found. A fear-
some grenade made secretly of half-
inhibited junk from here and there on
the ship. But it was inhibited only in
a relative sense. Monk must have been
holding it in both hands, shielding the
Martian stone from it with his body,
when it blew.

The concussion slammed the big steel
door into me just as I reached it. There
was a roaring and a blackness and then,
after a while, a time like a dream suf-
fered in a red mist. In that waking
dream I was crawling into the strong-
room on all fours. I crawled back out
dragging Monk with me.

Some men were picking themselves up
off the deck and others were standing
there dazed. . I put my hands on Monk
here and there and one of the men
watching me made a sick noise. I looked
up at him. He didn’t say anything but
I read his thoughts.

Stop it — stop it! You can’t put him
back together like a doll. He’s dead.

Frontenac was there, too, staring
down at me and thinking: Why couldn’t
you have been killed instead? Damn you
and your lucky hunches! This makes
twice!

I got up and took hold of his throat.
I put my thumbs on his windpipe, lock-
ing my fingers behind his neck, but I
couldn’t squeeze hard enough to kill
him. I didn’t have much strength left
and there was something wrong with
the back of his neck — something hard
in his flesh or under it — which distract-
ed me.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw a
watch stick swing up. Then the whole
back of my head seemed to explode.

I WAS alone in a compartment and I
knew I was in the sick bay. My head

itched and when I put my hand up I felt
bandages on it. There were bandages
on my ribs too. I tried to sit up but I
couldn’t make it. There was a buzzer
clipped to my pillow and I pushed it.

A big surgeon came in. I saw another
man outside my door, with a watch
stick. The surgeon looked at the meters
recessed in the head of my bed where I
couldn’t see them: temperature, pulse,
respiration and what have you, all at a
glance. “How are you feeling?” he
asked.

““I don’t know yet,” I told him. Then,
after a moment, I said; “Monk’s dead,
isn’t he?”

“Never mind that. You just take it
easy.” '

Then Fisher came in. His right arm
was in a cast. “How is he?” he asked.
The surgeon shook his head.

“I can’t turn him over to you yet,
Commander. He’s still a sick man.”
“Fisher!” I said. “Monk’s dead, isn’t
he?” The F.S.S. man nodded. “You’ve
got me under arrest, haven’t you? Be-
cause I tried to kill the captain. But I
didn’t manage it, did I?”

“No.”

I got my head off the pillow. The big
surgeon said, “Hey, where do you think
you’re going?”

“I’m getting up. And this time I am
going to kill him!” *

But the surgeon’s hands were firm
and I couldn’t get my shoulders off the
bed and I knew I couldn’t kill a fly and
I began to laugh and blackness came
dowm again. . . .

I WAS stronger now. I knew it would-
n’t be long before they turned me
over to Fisher and then I’d be locked up
tight until they decided to court martial
me. The door was open just a little and
I could see the guard outside. This time
I didn’t thumb the buzzer. I just hissed
at him.

He came to the door and opened it a
little wider, to look in at me.

“Where are we? I asked softly.
“What’s the ship’s position ?”

106

"I'm not supposed to talk to you, Lieu-
tenant. If you want anything, buzz for
the surgeon.”

“Lend a shipmate a hand, will you?
Just tell me where we are. That’s all I
want to know.”

He hesitated. Then he said, “Twen-
ty-four hours from land, give or take a.
couple of minutes either way. And
that’s all you get from me!”

I groaned. If Frontenac was going to
do anything at all, he’d have to do it
fast. So that something was likely to
happen any minute. Lying there, I be-
gan to test the ship for danger.

How can I describe that dark audi-
tion behind closed eyelids? None of the
five senses entered into it, and mem-
ory itself had, .to be blocked out to pre-
vent it from distorting my impressions
of the here and now. If it was like any-
thing familiar, it was like a synthesis of
sound and touch. She was a full sized
cruiser, and the job I had to do was as
difficult as checking the pitch of every
single instrument in a full symphony
orchestra as they tuned up all at once.

I sensed the great basso booming of
the hull, augmented by the fugue of the
labyrinth within it — passageways for
humans, for air, water, waste and com-
munications, each with a tonality of its
own, as distinct and separate as the
sounds of flutes and violins and wood-
winds. I had to identfy the harplike
complexity of radar equipment, the tiny
pipings of an infinity of gauges, instru-
ments and gadgets, and the muted clari-
on call of the power pile in the stern.

That was where I found discord. The
converter itself rang true, but its gover-
nor gave back countless, tingling little
reactions instead of one clear chime. I
had come across that reaction before,
and I knew it could mean only one thing.
The governor had been crystallized !

I started to get up. Then I made my-
self lie back again. I wasn’t in any con-
dition to fight my way to the engine
room nor anywhere else. All right, so
you don’t have muscles, I told myself.

t Turn page]

107

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AMENDED BY THE ACTS OF MARCH 3. 1933, AND
JULY 2, 1946 of Thrilling Wonder Stories, published
quarterly at New York, N. Y., for October 1, 1964. 1.
The names and addresses of the publisher, editor, man-
aging editor, and business managers are: Publisher,

Standard Magazines, Inc., 10 E. 40th St., New York,
N. Y. Editor, Theron Raines, 10 E. 40th St., New York,
N. Y. Managing editor. None. Business manager, Harry
Slater, 10 E. 40th St., New York, N. Y. 2. The owner is:
Standard Magazines, Inc., 10 E. 40th St.. New York,
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of the company as trustee or in any other fiduciary
relation, the name of the person or corporation for whom
such trustee is acting: also the statements in the two
paragraphs show the affiant’s full knowledge and belief
as to the circumstances and conditions under which stock-
holders and security holders who do not appear upon the
books of the company as trustees, hold stock and securities
in a capacity other than that of a bona fide owner. Harry
Slater, business manager. Sworn to and subscribed before
me this 1st day of October, 1964. Max Ullenberg, Notary
Public. (My commission expires March 30, 1956).

Use your head!

The door was still open just a little
and I could see the guard. I could see a
loudspeaker on the bulkhead just be-
yond him, too, and it gave me an idea.
More than once I had made people jump
by tuning my mind in on a speaker and
agitating its diaphragm into giving a
high frequency shriek just as they
passed it. What I was trying to do now
was a lot more difficult.

Very faintly, the speaker said: “Now
hear this. This is Commander Fisher
speaking.” It sounded like Fisher even
to me, and I knew better. The guard
turned and looked at it. “This is Com-
mander Fisher speaking,” it repeated,
and this time I managed to get more
power into it. “The guard on duty in
the sick bay will conduct Lieutenant
Hammond to the bridge. Conduct Lieu-
tenant Hammond to the bridge at once!”
The man shrugged and started toward
my door. .

There were guards everywhere along
our route, armed with watch sticks.
They don’t issue firearms to people on '
Hammond. I wouldn’t say anything
spaceships except in trivideo dramas.
People in space don’t have anything to
shoot at except each other, and if the
voyage is long enough they’re likely to
start doing just that. Fisher had the
only blaster aboard that wasn’t locked
away in the armory, but he was F.S.S.
and the secret service makes rules to
suit itself.

Jerold Frontenac was there on the
bridge, at the projection table, with his
staff around him. He stared when he
saw us, and said, “I didn’t send for the
prisoner !”

“Commander Fisher’s orders, sir,” the
man said uncomfortably.

“Ask Commander Fisher to report to
me at once!” The guard was gone before
I could open my mouth. Then I said:

“Fisher didn’t give any order. I just
tricked the man into thinking he did.”

V ERY gently, Frontenac said, “You
look like a pretty sick man to me,

more until a defense counsel has been
appointed, if I were you.”

“I didn’t come up here to talk to you,”
I told him. “I’ll take care of you later.
Right now I want to talk to the rest of
the staff.” I turned to look at them, but
none of them would look back at me.

“You’d better take the captain’s ad-
vice, Hammond,” our executive officer
said.

“Listen to me!” I took hold of a chair,
because the journey up to the bridge
had taken a lot out of me. “If you don’t
listen, this ship will never reach the
ground. In just about twelve hours
you’re going to have to start prelimi-
nary braking action with the jets. And
if you do that without installing a new
governor, this ship is going to blow up
in a million pieces!” *

The chief engineer’s jaw dropped.
“Man, it would be almost impossible to
damp down behind the shielding and
change governors in twelve hours.”

Frontenac shrugged. “Fortunately,
it’s a theoretical problem.”

“The governor in our converter right
now has been crystallized !” I snapped.
“It won’t control the output properly.
And if we get an accumulation at the
tube intakes it will backlash right
through the converter into the pile. The
whole business will go critical in a frac-
tion of a second, and that will be the
end!”

No one said anything for a moment.
Then Frontenac said, “Very dramatic.
But how could our governor have be-
come crystallized ? This is a brand new
ship.”

“I don’t know how ! It doesn’t matter.
It could have been done with a shell-
circuit breaker. It doesn’t take a genius
to rig one up that would be small enough
to hide in one fist. Anybody could have
played it on the governor heads a few
seconds at a time until the damage was
done.”

He leaned back lazily in his chair.
“What makes you so sure of this, Ham-
mond? You haven’t even been in the
engine room, have you? Before' you an-

swer, remember that I can get the duty
officer on the screen and cheek up on
you.”

Now I saw where he was going. I’d
used my head, all right. I’d used it to
sign my own death warrant and every-
one else’s. “No, I haven’t been in the
engine room," I admitted.

“Then how do you know the governor
is crystallized?”

“I know it because I have extra-
sensory perception,” I said desperately.
“I’m a paradept.”

Frontenac began to laugh. But I no-
ticed that no one laughed with him. I
had shipped out with most of the officers

on the staff before, and while he had
convinced them I was mad, they didn’t
like to see me laughed at because of it.
He noticed their silence. In an instant
he was all charm again, smoothing his
hair down on the back of his head in
that way of his. For some reason that
gesture reminded me of the moment
when I had tried to choke him, with
Monk’s blood on my hands.

Now he was looking past me and say-
ing, “Commander Fisher, will you escort
Lieutenant Hammond back to the sick
bay? Try to forgive me, gentlemen.
I’ve been inexcusably rude to a man who
isn’t responsible for his actions. I’m
afraid we’ve all been under a terrific
strain. ”

W ITHOUT turning to look at Fisher
I said, “Just a minute, Captain.
There’s one more thing. If I’m crazy
enough to think the governor is crystal-

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109

lized, maybe I’m crazy enough to think
I know who did it! Why don’t you ask
me who did it, Captain?”

“Very well, Lieutenant. Who did it?”

I leaned across the table and pointed
at him. I knew what I had to do now.
“You did it! You’re the man who’s been
trying to wreck this ship!”

His mouth curved open and I think
he was going to laugh again. But he
never managed it. Instead, he cried out
and leaped to his feet, almost tripping
over his chair. Far above the UHF band
my probing mind had found the fre-
quency of the thing some plastic sur-
geon had buried in his flesh at the top
of his spine. It was a miniature bone
conduction signal receiver, and now I
was exciting it to vibrations its wearer
had never been meant to withstand.
Frontenac tried to speak as he backed
away from me, but I forced my gains
higher, and he gave a gibbering sob in-
stead.

OOMEONE said “Captain!” and went
^ toward him. Others began to close in
on me.

“Watch him!” I yelled. Frontenac
scuttled away from us like a crab, bent
almost double, his hands clawing at the
back of his head until his nails drew
blood. Whoever he was — whether he
was actually Jerold Frontenac or wheth-
er the real Frontenac was long since
dead — he had guts. He must have felt
as if his brains were frying in hell, but
he went reeling up the skeletal stairway
to the flying bridge, still ripping at the
back of his head and making sounds I
hope never to hear again. I yelled once
more. “He’s after the big switch !”

If he managed to close the emergency
circuit that tripped off the main tubes
in our stern, the governor would fail
just as I had said it would. And that
would be all.

Somewhere in the din a blaster
coughed and went off. Its beam sizzled
past me and hit Frontenac’s back, burn-
ing a big black pit there. He spun as he
died, flopping over a railing, and came

crashing down to the deck at my feet. A
wisp of reeking smoke curled slowly up
from his body.

Fisher stepped out from behind me,
awkwardly shoving his blaster into its
holster. “That’s pretty fair shooting,
for left handed stuff,” I said foolishly.
I swayed, and for a moment everything
blurred. Then I saw that he was exam-
ining the back of the dead man’s neck.

“Concealed bone conduction receiver,”
he said. “A typical Sinatic espionage
gadget. Secret communications. What
did you do to him, Hammond?”

“Telekinesis,” I explained. “Mental
broadcasting, in a way. I kept throwing
an overload into the thing at close
range.”

“How did you know about it?”

“I felt it under my fingers that day
when I tried to choke him. But I was
too stupid to realize what it was.” Ev-
erything around me started to tilt into a
slow spin and Fisher’s grip was strong
and comforting on me.

“Get a chair!” he ordered. Someone
slid a chair into place behind me and
someone else helped Fisher to lower me
into it. Everyone wanted to help now.

“Thanks,” I said. I heard myself try-
ing to laugh and I wasn’t making a very
good job of it. “Might as well finish my
last voyage in comfort. Come and see
me in the zoo, boys. Or wherever they
decide to put me. Come and see the
freak who used to be a spaceman.

Fisher snapped his fingers for atten-
tion, and pointed to a panoramplate.
Someone turned it on and I saw the
whole galaxy spread out before me, ex-
cept for the part hidden by Earth’s
great serene, welcoming curve, because
we were almost home now.

“The stars!” Fisher said. “Sirius,
Procyon and Regulus!” He called off
the resounding, ancient names like a roll
of honor. “Aldebaran! Rigel! Betel-
geuse! There they are, Hammond —
your personal gift to the human race.
After today, do you think we’d dare to
send our first ship out into the stars
without you ?” • • •

THE HEADER
SPEAKS

( Continued from page 8)

Dangers of

Colon Troubles

causes such action, but rather their strict atten-
tion to a social tradition and pattern.

In most primitive cultures religion dominates
group thinking. In a more civilized structure it
may be either religion, or the state. The efforts
of the state to replace God have thus far ended
in failure. However, as Julian Huxley pointed
out in his brilliant collection of essays-, Man In
The Modern World, it is the next logical step in
the evolution of ,God. First there was the primi-
tive gods. Fierce beast gods. Always ready to
wreck ruin and havoc, unless appeased. Then
came the Greek conception of God, or gods. The
Greek gods were human ; they made human errors.
Yet at the same time they had a broader field of
power than the early gods. The early gods might
be confined to one district, or even one particular
household. And while the Greeks had household
gods, tiiey were generally the same gods worshipped
around each hearth. Not different, individual gods
for each home.

Then came the Christian God. One God. A new
idea. With only one God, that God, of necessity,
must be all powerful. This God made man in his
image. He appeared on earth as a man. And died
as a man. And then, the story goes, arose.

•So the concept of divine authority has come
from beast-gods powerful only in certain circum-
stances, or locally. To gods in the image of man
with broader power. To a God who made man in
his image. To an all powerful One God.

The evolution of God has reached a dead end.
When any evolution comes to a status quo, the
end comes quickly.

Attempts at a god-state have been unsuccessful,
but the possible all-state of the future has been
foreseen by George Orwell in 1 984, and Aldous
Huxley in Brave New World.

It is my humble opinion that group thinking
is a race heritage. When the first cave men band-
ed together to kill an animal, then group thinking
w'ith all its tradition was born. And will continue
so long as man must have a crutch to lean on.

One last thing to be taken care of ; I wish to
compliment Rita Whitney for her fine letter.
When most women say how easily the male is
conquered, they forget to leave out certain things
that would give the female a bad mark. Congrats
on setting down a fair discussion of Male, Female.
— 6438 E. 4tli Place. Tulsa. Ohio.

But isn’t there any alternative to making a
god out of the state? I think that both Orwell
and Huxley intended their books to be taken
as warning signals rather than prophecies, say-
ing ‘‘This might happen if we don’t watch our-
selves.” But enough of this controversy. Let’s
turn to a letter about the previous issue.

NO ROOM IN THE WOMB

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

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111

Ted Sturgeon by letter, but I recalled the old
adage that although it's nice to let the authors
know you enjoyed their story, it’s nicer to let the
editors know'. Then you may get more of ’em.
•So let me hasten to urge you to print more
Sturgeon. 7 he Golden Helix was one of the
finest stories I can recall, in eight solid years of
reading sci-fic in general and TWS and SS in
particular.

1 can recall few stories which have been more
real to me while reading.

There is just one point on which I challenge
the poor fish (no insult intended . . . the sturgeon
is a royal fish, isn’t it?) and this is a point on
which I speak with- unassailable dignity. Not so
awfully long ago, I wrote and sold a novelette
concerning itself with mutations and human birth
and in the course of writing said novelette, I did
all kinds of reading on the oldest science in the
world . . . the study of obstetrics. Therefore I
just don’t buy that premise of multiple births be-
ing "the last major mutation of the human race.”

It might hapjH-n . . . anything can happen in
mutations . . . but the result wouldn’t be human,
as he specifically states that Tod and April and
Carl and Moira and all of the rest of them were.

Let’s examine the business of multiple human
births. They do happen, of course, the Dionnes
to witness that’ as many as five human infants
can be simultaneously gestated and birthed, and
survive the experience. But please note that the
Dionnes weighed all together, a little more than
thirteen pounds . * . about the extreme span of the
weight range for a single normal infant, or the
combined weight of normal twins. Marie, the
smallest, weighed just over a pound, and their
survival was crucial, demanding all kinds of spe-
cial treatment. There were definitely not a "nice
healthy bunch of brats.” The present human womb
just isn’t suited to such crowded conditions, and
a very large percentage even of twins are pre-
mature, wdiile almost all triplets, quads and
quints are prematurely born, making their sur-
vival a challenge to science.

So. in order for multiple births to become the
rule rather than the freakish exception, let’s see
what kind of modifications woidd be necessary
for those mutations of Sturgeon’s.

First ; the human female might develop a multi-
ple uterus, like the cat or dog or most other mam-
mals which have their young in broods and lit-
ters. This would be a major mutation, but is not
unthinkable, since cases have been recorded of
women with a double uterus, who produce non-
twin offspring, either simultaneously or within a
month or tw-o of each other. This would eliminate
the physical crowding which makes for early con-
tractions and premature labor.

However, in this case, the offspring would have
to be smaller in proportion to the size of the mature
human.

Second, the human female should develop a
stronger balance and more bony support in the
pelvic region. As stated above, thirteen pounds is
about the extreme of the weight limit for a single
normal infant, and it’s rare for multiple births to
weigh more than that, when combined. “Normal”
weight for a single infant is about 6.7 pounds.
“Normal” for twins is about five pounds each;
few triplets weigh more than four pounds, or

about twelve pounds all together, whereas, with
quads and quints, the lower limit just doesn’t exist
. . . babies have been born and survived weighing
as little as eleven ounces, whereas the whole
litter seldom weighs more than twelve or thir-
teen pounds.

In other words . . . infants born in regular lit-
ters of six or seven would make the normal
wciijht of a new born baby, about two pounds . . .
and a baby that small isn’t fitted for survival. Not
under present conditions. And the human female
organism simply is not suited to gestate and carry,
for a full nine months, six normal five-pound
babies . ,. . fTve pounds being the hospital rule-of-
thumb dividing normal infants from premature
or immature embryos.

As I say, speaking- of mutations anything can
happen, but it would need a lot of mutation ; the
development of a multiple uterus, the modifica-
tion of pelvic structure, the increase in the glandu-
lar secretion of progesterone (the anti-premature-
labor hormone) and some sort of breast modifica-
tion as well. Mammals must be fitted by nature (in
spite of the increase of bottle-feeding) to nour-
ish their normal brood. Hence the double breasts
on the female; twins are semi-normal. Triplets
and more have always been an anomaly (freak
to you.) Women who normally had six or seven
infants would have to be supplied, by mammalian
nature, with the wherewithal to nourish these
"many infants ; notice the many breasts on a nurs-
ing cat or bitch. And I doubt if, by our present
standards, a six-breasted woman could be described
in the aesthetic terms Sturgeon used for his
females.

Sturgeon is a darned excellent writer. But he
is no mammalologist.

Not to mention the psychological modifications
which would be necessary in the human female
to permit her to divide the maternal attention (I
speak of instinctive, subconscious attention, on
the level which permits a human female mammal
to sleep through a thunderstorm and instinctively
wake up when her baby whimpers or turns over,
even if she has a nurse to look after him) among
six infants. It would mean that the human fe-
male mammal would have to be a mammal with
the implication thereof, that she is wrapped up
in her biological functions and cannot divide her
subconscious attentions to take in aesthetic and
ethical studies. The main cause for the rise in
civilization among the human (and this is theory,
of course, not facts as the above statements are)
lies only partly in the human opposing thumb
and upright posture ; it lies also in the single off-
spring which permits some division of attention
on the part of the parent.

On the other hand, if women of the human
race became conscious of themselves as female
mammals first and egocentric personalities second,
it might be a lot better for the human race. As
I’ve repeatedly stated in these columns, woman is
getting beyond her own biology, and it isn’t a good
idea to get too far away. Questions, anyone? —
Box 246. Rochester, Texas.

This letter arrived too late to be included
in the previous issue, but w»e thought readers
would be interested in what author Bradley has

112

to say to author Sturgeon. But to turn again
from the clangor of controversy, we have a . . .

BRADBURY FAN

by Rudolph Franchi

Dear Editor: In your Summer 1954 issue of
FSM you published a list of stories by Ray
Bradbury.

Concerning five of these :

The Piper, Promotion To Satellite, Rocket
Skin. Square Pegs and A Blade of Grass, I would
appreciate the following information.

In what issues were they published and have
any of them been published since under differ-
ent titles? If so which stories under which titles.

1 would also like to communicate with another
Bradbury fan.

I am very sorry to trouble you but I find myself
in dire need of this and much more information
on Bradbury. Any help you can give will be ap-
preciated. — 4.14 li. 67tli St., Nete York 21, N .Y .

TWS Feb. 1943: TWS Fall 1943; TWS
Spring 1946: TWS Oct.. 1948; TWS Dec.
1949. Those are the dates, respectively, for the
stories you mention. If you want to read (or
re-read) The Piper watch for the next issue
of FSM.

Could any other Ray Bradbury fans sup-

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Do We Have To Die?

Forty-three years ago in forbidden Tibet,
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FEN DIFFICULT TO ANALYZE

by A. A. Gilliland

To the illustrious and Honorable Editors of
TWS; Greetings: I wish to commend you on an
unusually excellent issue. The best of any s-f mag
I have read in the past six months. And I have
the conceit to believe that 1 have discriminating
tastes. (My first taste of S-F was, believe it or
not, Murray Leinsters First Contact, published in
•45.)

The Amateur Alchemist was well written, and
well plotted. I appreciated these touches especially :
(1) No attempt to explain the mechanism of
moving from world to world. Very sensible. (2)
The character of the warlock Gebhardt, rein-
forced, surprisingly enough by the description of
the castle and its interior decorations. (3) The
painless interpolation of the Sleeping Beauty
legend.

On the debit side. PhD’s in Physics are very
much in demand today, and not to bolster adver-
tising claims. This was irrelevant to the story
however, and could well be dispensed with.

“The Child .Goddess of Myr” was an entertain-
ing enough story but lacked sociological under-
standing on an absolutely magnificent scale. Any
culture with spaceships will have enough experi-
ence with heresy, apostasy, etc., to discard such
obsolete, irrational and cumbersome taboos as the
ones described.

No Place for Housekeeping was the weakest
short story in the issue. Trade-In was the best.
The characterizations are what made the story.

As for The Reader Speaks, fen are notoriously
difficult to subject to analysis. The best of them
are impossible, and the worst run off at the
mouth, screaming about white coats with men
in them.

So I will call a few as I see them.

Bill Deeck. for instance. From his letter (and,
I admit, others) I would say that he is well above
average intelligence, an extrovert, an exhibition-
ist, and is more than a little gregarious. With the
last he is sadly, unable to get along with people.
Asocial. And, I think, immature.

To give due credit, I (enjoyed his letter.

John Courtois for another. He makes fun of
the things he is afraid of. His sense of humor
is (to my taste) a bit raunchy, to say the least.
(To answer one of his questions, a magnetic field
is useful for swinging elections and promoting
hysterias). But when he calms down he. also, is
quite entertaining. If he is still writing five years
from now (which I doubt) he will be in your
stable of authors.

Tom Pace, by way of contrast, combines in-
telligence with maturity. Some of his points I dis-
agree with, but I don’t despise them.

One deserves comment. It is true that only the
man can change himself, but the army offers him
some powerful inducements to do so.

Joe Gibson, also, has been around a long time.
His letter is almost an essay, but I like his style.

Rita Whitney has some excellent points in her

missive, which is, I think, a bit overlong. However,
at a conference table I do not think they (women)
would make as good a showing as she expect*.
Cunning and fast talk are nonetheless weak weap-
ons for all of their deadliness. Oppose them with
force and intelligence, and what have you? A
bundle from heaven.

And that is that. As the cat said, after being
belled by the mice: "My tail is tolled.” Adios
amici. — 420 Lingle Are., Lafayette, hid.

In reference to Courtois’s writing, we've
heard that he’s at work on a story, but no
manuscript has come in yet. Perhaps the rumor
is unfounded.

As for briefer mentions, we have a letter
from Wni. Deeck, 8400 Potomac Ave., College
Park, Md., threatening dire consequences if
we spell his first name William again. Okay.
Never again.

Frank Arthur Kerr, 10100 W. Broadview
Dr., Bay Harbor Islands, Miami Beach, Fla.,
says that if he were editor he would ( 1 ) Get
the print off the cover picture, (2) Drop the
science quiz, (3) Restore fanzine reviews, (4)
Print a Captain Future Anthology, (5) Trim
the edges.

James Kingston, 2521 - Durant, Berkeley 4,
Calif., didn't like the Leinster story and thought
Mack Reynolds A Dream Dying was the best
in the issue, with Trade-In by Win Marks
runner-up.

On the other hand, Charles R. Maytum, 100
Wayne St., Providence, R. I., wasn’t exactly
pleased with the ending of Trade-In. "I like to
see justice triumph. To think of the doctor
murdering the hero, then cutting up his torso
to repair someone else, I growled at that.”

Thom Perry, 4040 Calvert St., Lincoln 6,
Nebr., hopes we'll keep the letter column up to
par. It all depends on the letter-w'riters, we
say.

Kenneth C. Worley, Jr., Box 192, Kearney,
Nebr., says he never likes anything except
Deeck’s letters. Okay, maybe we’ll have an
all-Deeck issue.

W. C. Brandt, 1725 N. Seminary Ave., Oak-
land 21, Calif., liked The Amateur Alchemist
but still prefers space wars as his favorite
story material.

J. H. Eveland, Box 291, Hope, Idaho, says
he owns half a mile of Trestle Creek and that
any of us who ever come out his way can pay
him a visit. That’s all for this time. See you
next issue. — The Editor

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ICS

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ARCHITECTURE
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CONSTRUCTION

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□ Estimating

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ART

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AVIATION

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BUSINESS

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O Bookkeeping and Accounting

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□ Creative Salesmanship

□ Federal Tax

□ Letter-writing Improvement

□ Managing Small Business

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CHEMISTRY

n Choi rVrrt ZV .twin. □ Analytical Chemistry
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□ Sketching and Painting
AUTOMOTIVE

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□ Auto Elec. Technician

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□ Automobile Mechanic

□ General Chemistry

□ Natural Gas Prod. & Trans.

□ Petroleum Engineering
O Plastics

□ Pulp and Paper Making

CIVIL. STRUCTURAL
ENGINEERING
O Civil Engineering

□ Construction Engineering

□ Highway Engineering

O Reading Struct. Blueprints

□ Sanitary Engineering

□ Structural Engineering
D Surveying and Mapping

DRAFTING
O Aircraft Drafting

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ELECTRICAL

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□ Linemen

HIGH SCHOOL

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□ Good English

□ High School Subjects

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LEADERSHIP

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MECHANICAL
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